


Hanging On A Star

by Yours_Truly_Commander_Shepard



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Alternate Universe - Music, Alternate Universe - Rock Band, Angst with a Happy Ending, Enemies to Lovers, F/M, Friends to Lovers, Getting Back Together, Loss of Virginity, Minor Finn/Rose Tico, Music Lessons, Nobody dies in this fic, Slow Burn, Slow Burn Caught Fire, a star is born au, mentions of drug and alcohol abuse
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-05
Updated: 2020-04-22
Packaged: 2021-02-19 10:42:13
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 16
Words: 81,881
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22576447
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Yours_Truly_Commander_Shepard/pseuds/Yours_Truly_Commander_Shepard
Summary: Today, Rey Johnson is a breakout star with a rising single, a major label contract, and a five-year-old photograph of her kissing the lead singer of the Knights of Ren that she just can't shake.Five years ago, Ben Solo was a lonely American musician on extended holiday in the West Midlands without a working car, new material, or a friend in the world.Two stories.A Star is Born AU.
Relationships: Rey/Ben Solo | Kylo Ren
Comments: 628
Kudos: 483





	1. Watching the Wheels

**Author's Note:**

  * For [KyloTrashForever](https://archiveofourown.org/users/KyloTrashForever/gifts).



> Guys, I have no business writing this. Am I a musician? No. Have I spent more than three months in England? No. Did this fandom need another rock star AU? Also no. 
> 
> I have poor impulse control and I love this sinking ship.
> 
> ***
> 
> A gift for Court, who wrote the definitive hot rock star Kylo Ren and requested sad music teacher Ben Solo many months ago.

**_Now_ **

“So, is ‘Motion Sickness’ about Kylo Ren?” the interviewer asks her, fluttering her eyelashes as though she’s said something clever.

Rey keeps her smile fixed and bright. She’s prepared for this question. It comes up every time, without fail. Four interviews in a row. 

“Oh, Trilla, you know I can’t tell you. Wasn’t it more fun when you didn’t know ‘You’re So Vain’ was about Warren Beatty?” Rey says, the same answer she’s given since the photos leaked off of Rose's unprotected Facebook account. 

Trilla is a pro at this too; she can’t publish that quote. She needs something new to sell a profile on Rey four months after her EP’s release. She’ll keep digging until she gets something she can put in a headline: Rey Johnson gets ‘personal,’ or some variation on that theme. 

“Who else could it be, though?” Trilla presses. “You’re a breakout talent, and the only artist you’ve ever collaborated with is Kylo Ren. He's the man 'in a band,' right?" 

Rey reads the subtext even without the little emphasis on “collaborated.” They want to know what man to credit for Rey’s breakout single, and the music press seems to have converged on one she hasn’t seen in five years. 

“Kylo Ren was not a collaborator on any of my music,” Rey says, smile still up. “ _Resistance_ was the result of long hours in the garage with my bandmates over the past two years. It was a group effort, and the people responsible are Rose and Paige Tico, Jannah Barak, Finn-”

“I understand,” Trilla says smoothly, before Rey can talk about the actual music again. “Are there other artists besides Kylo Ren you count as influences?”

Rey hasn’t even admitted publicly that Ben taught her to play the guitar, but arguing the predicate of the question will get her nowhere. And she knows what Trilla is really asking: did Rey shag some other famous rock star? And Rey’s so fed up with fencing around the issue, that she almost wants to hint that she’s been sleeping with musicians since secondary school. Loads of them. She took that from Take That. Can’t get enough of them! Impossible to narrow the field to just one! She wants to say that ‘Motion Sickness’ is about Sting and the the Gallagher brothers and Marilyn Manson, and she’s been popping out of the West Midlands to have affairs with them in between shifts at the garage. 

But Rey promised Rose that she’d keep her cool for this interview, and instead she rattles off a list of rock greats she’s looped through the little speaker over the four-post lift: Aimee Mann and Joni Mitchell and Leonard Cohen. 

“What about Leia Skywalker?” Trilla asks.

“Leia’s one of the all-time greatest folk artists, of course,” Rey grits out. It’s another loop back to the topic she's determined to avoid comment on. 

“It’s been widely reported that Skywalker Records wants to sign you to the label,” Trilla adds. “How will it feel to work with Kylo’s family?”

Now it’s Rey’s turn to blink rapidly, because she did not know there were wide reports about that. All she knew about was one email in her inbox, still starred and awaiting a reply. She’s avoided searching for herself online, because every article starts with that same damn photo. 

“I can’t confirm anything about that,” Rey says, stalling.

Trilla crosses her legs and brushes her sleek dark bob behind an ear. She doesn’t say anything; she’s waiting to respond in hopes that the quiet will compel Rey to fill it with more details. 

Well, Rey’s been to therapy. She knows that trick. She won’t be falling for it. She flattens her lips and stares the journalist down. 

“It would feel a little like fate, wouldn’t it? Luke Skywalker launching Kylo Ren’s career, and now yours?” Trilla finally asks.

Rey sucks in a furious breath before she can think the better of it. “Luke Skywalker did _not_ launch Ben’s career, _or_ mine. We wrote and recorded every single song on _Resistance_ in Birmingham. And Ben wore a bloody _helmet_ to perform so that nobody knew who he was for his first three albums! You don’t need to sign to a major label to make good music, and…”

Rey clamps her jaw shut, too late. Trilla has a sleekly satisfied look on her face. She’s got her story now. 

* * *

‘Don’t Look Back in Anger’ is playing in the reception when Rey skulks back out of Trilla Suduri’s office, and it feels like a calculated insult. She’s sure it isn’t. 

There’s no reason for her to comment on any of Ben’s music that he wrote before they even met. It’s none of her business. Not that there’s any reason for her to comment on anything he’s written since; he wasn’t writing while they were together, and it’s just hubris to imagine any of his newer songs are about her. 

He may be the only rock star she’s ever shagged, but there’s no reason to assume that equation works in the other direction. She wouldn’t know. 

Rey gets her parking validated and pulls her rain coat back on to face the February wind. She looks around for photographers, but it’s mostly a reflex at this point. She gives interviews to music outlets, but until today, she’s steadfastly avoided saying anything about the Knights of Ren, and she hardly does anything interesting that could be photographed. She hasn’t seen an unscheduled journalist in weeks. She’s not out at the clubs showing off her knickers or smashing champagne bottles, even if both have sounded like viable escapes at times over the past few months.

Rey gets to her little Fiesta and gets the heater going. She rubs her hands against the shaggy wool steering wheel cover to warm them before fishing out her mobile. 

She sees two missed calls from Poe and winces, but she’ll ring him when she’s in a better mood. Instead, she calls Rose.

Rose answers on the first ring, and Rey feels a pang of guilt already.

“Sweetie! How did it go?” Rose chirps at her. _Second Sister_ is a pretty big press; it’s not _Rolling Stone_ , but it’s got a lot of penetration in the music community. 

“Uh,” Rey says, trying to think how to spin this. “We need a band meeting tonight. I haven’t even reviewed it, but we got a proposal from Skywalker Records, and somehow the press has it already.” 

Rose is quiet for a long time, and Rey can hear Paige demanding to know what happened in the background. 

“Oh my God, Rey!” Rose finally whispers. “We’re getting the fuck out of Birmingham, aren’t we?”

And Rey isn’t sure why her stomach drops at that. Isn’t that what they’ve all been working towards, the past two years? Practice sessions when they’re all bone-tired from loosening lug nuts or changing nappies or holding doors open all day long? Gigs in pubs that stink of stale beer that don’t even cover the petrol to drive there? Paycheques spent on recording equipment and editing software when they haven’t done the food shopping yet?

Maybe it’s that she doesn’t want to owe a thing to the Skywalkers. Or anyone else. 

“Yeah,” Rey says, after a long pause. “I guess we are.”

* * *

**_Then_ **

“Is the mechanic coming back today?” a belligerent American voice echoes through the garage. Rey didn’t hear anyone come in, so she narrowly avoids cracking her head against Mrs. Baccarin’s wheel well in surprise. She rolls out and glares at the intruder; in the open entrance to the garage, silhouetted against the midsummer late afternoon sun, is a very posh-looking fellow in Wayfarers and a wooly black jumper showing no signs of wear or travel. 

Rey ostentatiously brushes off her mechanic’s overalls and looks around the room. 

“She’s right here,” she manages to say in a civil tone.

The American looks a little abashed at that. “I’m sorry,” he says properly, and then ruins it by lying, “I didn’t see you under there.”

Well, customers are customers. Maybe the man's car will be more interesting than his manners.

“What can we do for you?” Rey asks, wiping her hands on her handkerchief, and taking a closer look at him. He’s older than she thought at first glance; his thick, wavy hair and muscular shoulders make him look like a private school rugby hero back from Cambridge for the holiday, but he has a couple of silver hairs that make her think he’s got a decade or more on her. 

“My car broke down a few blocks away,” he says, sticking his hands into his pockets. “Can you come take a look at it?”

Rey huffs in derision. “I can’t leave the shop,” she says. “But I can call a tow for you, and then take a look at it when I’m through rotating these tires.” 

The American hesitates. “It really can’t wait.”

Rey eyes him. He’s in expensive jeans and fancy loafers. She’s sure he’s not in a hurry, just a rich bastard who doesn’t to wait around her shop in a neighborhood teetering on the edge of dodgy. 

So she just rolls her eyes and prepares to slide back under the car. He’ll either wait or he won’t. 

“It’s a Citroen SM,” the man calls, just as she picks up a wrench. “Would you even know how to fix it if I got it in here?”

And that makes Rey freeze. A Citroen SM. She’s never even seen one in person before. Her mouth starts to water. She wonders whether it’s been retrofitted with a Maserati engine. Which transmission came with the original model. Which…

“Yeah, sure I can,” she blurts out. She’ll look it up. She’ll stay up all night if necessary.

“Are you positive?” he asks, a little dubious. “It’s an old-”

“It says all European models serviced out front, doesn’t it?” she says eagerly.

“So you can look at it now?” he asks, now feeling that he has gained the upper hand. 

Rey stills. Mrs. Baccarin will be back to pick up her car in half an hour, and Rey has to have the service done by then, or she won’t be able to pick up her son from work. 

“I- I’m sorry, I really have to finish this. I can give you the number of the other shop across town. Maybe he can see your car right now.” It burns like rolling in an anthill to send a single customer over to Teedo’s. 

“Alright,” the American says, resigned. 

Rey wipes her hands to go to the phone, then pauses. “He’ll cock it up, even if the tow doesn’t,” she says hastily. “You should let me do it. If you’ll hand me my stuff, I can finish this in fifteen. Then I’ll go see about your car.” 

She thinks he’ll object, but he squints at her for a long moment and then sighs. 

“Fine. I don’t know jack shit about cars though,” he warns her. 

Rey grins at him, willing to accept that as true. She devotes herself with renewed interest to the tires of the Transporter. The American is as useless as he promised, but even he is capable of fetching what she points at. He puts his sunglasses on top of his head and rolls his sleeves back over surprisingly muscular forearms. 

They’re wrestling the last tire into place when Grace Ellen Nyambura, who runs the front office, comes back from her break. She’s a tall, tidy woman in her late middle age, and she pauses after unlocking the door, heavy roll of keys in her hand. 

“Rey, darling, are you alright?” she asks, popping her head in and eying the interloper. 

“Fantastic,” Rey grunts as the wheel pops into position. She points at the bowl of lug nuts, and her new assistant passes them up to her. “I have a new apprentice who drives a Citroen SM, and he is helping me until I can see his car.” 

“Goodness,” says Grace Ellen. “Thank you, Mr….?” 

Rey hasn’t caught his name yet, so she looks up at the American to see his answer. His long, somewhat asymmetrical jaw tenses before he answers. 

“Ben.” Another pause. “Solo.” 

Rey wonders whether he’s lying, but Mrs. Nyambura certainly doesn’t care. 

“Well, thank you for all the help, Mr. Solo. Rey can get anything on wheels moving, so I know she’ll take care of you. Ever so kind of you to jump in, since Mr. Baccarin hasn’t been able to work this week, and we’re short-handed.” 

Ben’s face twitches, like he isn’t thanked very often, and doesn’t know how to respond. 

Rey pulls out from under the van and pulls Mrs. Baccarin’s keys out of her pocket. She puts them on the row of hooks for pickup, and does a quick wash up in the loo to get some of the grease off her hands. She imagines Ben doesn’t want her smudging his antique car. 

“Right,” she says when emerging. “Lead the way!”

Ben has been enduring the wait with a better grace than he took the initial refusal, but his shoulders visibly relax when he points the way up the hill from the motorway. 

The garage is not far off the motorway, but the neighborhood gets dodgy very quickly, and Ben sticks out in his posh loafers and expensive trousers. When they make it to the car, parked several streets away at a petrol station, Rey can see several of the local anti-social element already eying the car and now Ben with an acquisitive air. 

Rey meets them look for look and bares her teeth covertly. She knows enough of their names from secondary that she doesn’t think they’ll try anything with her right there. 

The car is as lovely as she imagined. Forest green and gleaming like it’s just come out from under a dust cover somewhere. Rey takes a moment to run her fingertips over the bonnet and drool before asking Ben to get in and try to start it. 

After a fumble where he moves around to the wrong side of the car, he hops in and tries to rev the ignition. Rey winces at the sound; the starter isn’t catching. 

“Do you want to try?” he asks after the third failure. Rey shakes her head. 

“No, we’ll have to get it back to the garage so I can get under the bonnet,” she says. 

“So, a tow truck?” Ben asks. 

Rey would hate to see a single scratch on this beautiful piece of machinery. She looks from the car park down the street.

“Nah,” she says. “We’ll push it there.”

Ben’s somewhat removed expression focuses. “What?”

“Yeah,” Rey says, thinking it through. “Put it in neutral. If we can get it going, it’s downhill all the way to the garage. We’ll both give it a nice push, then you can scamper in and guide down and into the garage. Only one chance at it, mind, but it should work.” 

Ben is making that screwed up expression again like he isn’t requested to scamper very often. Even better, Rey thinks. It might do him some good. 

“This car must weigh 3000 pounds,” he sputters. “They used to make these things on a steel chassis!”

“Yeah, we’re going to look like hot shit when we get it going,” Rey tells him cheerfully. He chokes back a laugh, shaking his head. Nice hair, Rey notices. Thick and wavy, even if it does make him look like a private school toff. 

Rey kisses her biceps, raising her eyebrows at him. After a moment, he takes the bait, opening the door and leaving it open. 

“The guy I borrowed this car from? He likes the car more than me,” he tells her, significantly.

“Well, so do I, so I’ll be careful with it,” Rey responds, and he gives her a laugh. Big white American teeth, even if they’re not Hollywood straight. 

They get in behind the car, and Ben puts those wide shoulders to good use. Rey appreciates the bunch of muscles under his clothing as he puts his knees into it. The strain also does interesting things to a face already made interesting by the collision between the severity of his nose and the lushness of his full lips. 

Then Rey remembers that she promised to push too, and they manage to get the car rolling. Ben is startled by the sudden burst of momentum before he springs into a sprint, legs and arms flailing as he jumps for the car door. He must misjudge the speed, because he wipes out entirely, meeting the pavement with the full right side of his body. 

Rey would stop to laugh and/or render aid, but the car is picking up acceleration as it heads down the hill. 

“Oh no!” she yells, still somehow laughing, as she has to hurtle over Ben’s prone body to catch up to the car before it veers into traffic. 

She jumps in in time to jerk that iconic oval steering wheel back over to the right and keep the car in the lane. 

Without power steering or an accelerator, she can’t even spare a look in the side mirror to see if Ben made it out of the street in one piece; she has to judge when to brake to preserve enough momentum to make it over the transition from the road to the shop, and the brakes are very stiff and finicky in these old sports cars. 

She makes it, of course. She’s a professional. She beats out a quick drum roll on the steering wheel in victory, then darts out of the car to run back for her poor customer, hopefully not now a mushy spot in the street. 

She nearly intersects him as he jogs back down into the garage, hand pressed to his side. He’s got a little road rash on the back of his hand, but looks no more the worse for wear. He’s more concerned about the car than his own condition, but calms when he sees it securely nestled in one of their docks. 

Grace Ellen hears the commotion and comes back out of the office, hand pressed to her heart in concern. When she spies Ben’s wounds, she goes into full-on mother hen mode, ushering him into the back office and plying him with tea and Jammie Dodgers while Rey hunts out the plasters. She usually just applies duct tape when she scrapes herself up, but when she’s been indirectly responsible for an injury to a customer (much less a customer driving an expensive European car in likely need of expensive European repairs), she’ll break out the good first aid kit. 

As soon as she can, Rey sneaks back out the car and pops the hood. It’s a mouthwatering project, and she can’t wait to get started.

Ben reemerges with no fewer than three plasters applied around his hand, and watches her look at the engine. 

He clears his throat. “So, can you fix it?” 

Rey smiles at him knowingly. “I’m sure I can. Probably have to take apart the starter first.”

He nods as though he knows what she’s talking about. “So, about how long do you think it will take?” 

“Hard to say until I find the problem, and check on what kind of parts I need to order,” Rey asks. “Have you called anyone to come pick you up yet?”

“Ah,” Ben says, face turning disappointed. “So I can’t wait on it?” 

Rey laughs. “No, friend, like the song says, you don’t have to go home, but you can’t stay here. We close in fifteen minutes.”

Ben looks petulant. “I could pay you to keep the garage open late?”

Not a surprising offer for a man turning up in a fancy car.

“Where are you headed? I can give you a lift?” she offers, dodging the proposal. She doesn’t want to break it to him on the likely prospect of the extended stay of the Citroen in her garage just yet.

“Tanworth-in-Arden,” he says, after another moment’s hesitation.

“Doing the Nick Drake pilgrimage?” Rey asks. “Bit late in the day for that, isn’t it?” 

“You a fan?” Ben asks, eyebrows climbing into his forehead.

“Sure,” Rey shrugs. “It’s only a few miles away, and there’s not much else there for a man on holiday. I used to listen to Way to Blue on the walk to school. Lovely stuff.” 

Ben looks at her a little longer, pondering the mystery of a garage mechanic with an inner life.

Ben’s a bit of a snob, Rey’s figuring out. 

“Actually, I’m renting a cottage there,” Ben says. “I’m just on my way in.” 

“Well, do you want a lift or not?” Rey asks. “Or I could take you to a car rental?”

“No, I...thank you. I appreciate it.” 

That sorted, and no further obstacles to Rey’s budding relationship with the Citroen appearing, Rey disappears into the loo to take off her coveralls and fix her hair.

When she reappears in her jean shorts and floral blouse, Ben does a double-take, apparently confused to find that she is girl-shaped underneath her mechanic’s outfit and dirt. 

“How old are you?” is his demand, however.

“Eighteen,” Rey replies, hurrying to reassure him that she’s not a rookie mechanic; she started her training course directly after finishing her GCSEs. 

He looks only mildly reassured by that, somehow. 

“I’ve got a bunch of stuff in the trunk,” he says, pointing to the boot of the Citroen. “Will it fit in your car?”

Rey’s free to borrow her boss’ Peugeot, so she nods her agreement. 

When Ben opens the big boot on the Citroen, Rey’s surprised to see more than the suitcases she expected. There are two guitar cases, a pocket amp, and a mixing board.

She doesn’t ask, since it’s none of her business, but she takes a closer look at Ben’s hands when she next passes him. Big, ropy hands. A musician. 

Ben’s possessive of the guitar cases, but has no chivalric notions about refusing Rey’s assistance with the rest of it. 

Rey sends Grace Ellen home with a promise to ring the police the next day if Ben murders her, but the woman can’t imagine perfidy from a man whose hands she has bandaged, and waves Rey off.

Ben watches diffidently as Rey closes up the garage, but perks up once she’s in the driver’s seat. 

“Do you want to stop for chips or anything?” Rey asks, but Ben declines, telling her that the cottage is supposed to be stocked for his arrival. Rey supposes that it’s nice to be rich and on holiday, even in as unassuming of a place as this corner of the West Midlands. 

She points out supermarkets and other points of interest on the short drive down A435, and Ben nods attentively, watching her maneuvre through the traffic. Ben’s cottage turns out to be a lovely little two-story affair on a large piece of land, with gabled windows overlooking a sizable garden. The sun is pink over the horizon as she helps him unpack his belongings and carry them to the front door. He pulls out his fancy, new model mobile and gazes at it intensely as he fiddles with the lockbox. Then he switches it all the way off before sliding it back into his pocket. 

Rey doesn’t wait for an invitation before hauling the amplifier inside. She’s eager to see what a holiday rental for rich Americans with an interest in dead folk singers looks like.

It’s disappointingly modern inside: white walls and laminate floors, boring Ikea furniture. Ben doesn’t seem to notice, however. He ducks into the next room with his guitar, and Rey trails after him. 

The next room is dominated by a tall upright piano, a drum kit, and a large computer desk. 

“Oh!” Rey exclaims. “It’s all kitted out for music.” 

“Yeah,” Ben says slowly, setting his guitar down. “That’s the idea.” 

Rey approaches the piano, lifting the lid to peer into its guts. There’s not a speck of dust on it; someone must have been in today to clean and prepare the house for Ben’s arrival. It must be nice to be Ben.

“Can I get you a drink?” he asks, edging towards the kitchen. 

“Sure, thanks,” Rey says, still admiring the piano. She can’t help but walk around to the bench and rest her hands on the keys. She’s glad she scrubbed up so well, since she would hate to put greasy mechanic’s paws on this beautiful instrument. She rests her fingers there, testing the resistance. 

“Do you play?” Ben asks, returning from the kitchen with two bottles of Evian. 

“Some, sure,” Rey says, pressing a key experimentally. The tone is quick and true. 

“What do you like to play?” he presses, coming to stand behind her. 

Rey shrugs. “Elton John is awfully fun. Billy Joel if I’ve been drinking. Sometimes I write my own stuff.” 

Ben gives her a knowing look. “Well, go on and play something for me then,” he nudges her. 

Rey laughs. “Guessing by all the fancy kit you brought in, you’re some kind of professional,” she says. “I’ll just embarrass myself.” 

“Some kind of professional is about right,” he mutters. Shakes it off. “No, it’s a known rule. You sit at an instrument and say you can play it, you have to do it.” 

“I haven’t heard that rule!” Rey protests. 

“International law,” he declares. “What, are you scared?”

“Of course not,” Rey says hotly. “I’ll have you know I took many a second-place ribbon at the piano at my county’s music competition.”

“I find myself in the presence of musical royalty, I see,” he teases right back. “Or should I call up the first-place winner to play for me?”

“Nah, that’s my best mate Finn, and he’s working a night shift,” Rey says easily. “My gran taught piano. Rubbed off more on him than me.” 

“You’re stalling,” Ben says, eyes narrowing.

Rey scoffs. “Well, fine then, but I’m not playing anything I wrote,” she declares. “You’d have to get me piss drunk for that.” 

With a roll of her fingers, she launches into “Watching the Wheels,” which is her go-to party trick. No difficult crossover movements, and it showcases her nice alto. Also it’s an utterly ridiculous song to come out of the mouth of an eighteen-year-old from nowhere, Warwickshire. Ben doesn’t snicker like she thought he would, though. Instead, he keeps his head cocked and listens attentively until she hits the last chord. 

She doesn’t think she botched too many notes, but Ben doesn’t smile or applaud or do one of the things normal people do when she’s finished playing a song. Instead, he just considers her, as though he’s trying to see into her head. 

“Your singing is better,” he says, almost to himself. “Fine with the piano.” 

Rey snorts at his faint praise. She’s a mechanic, not a musician, after all. 

His gaze sharpens on her. “Can you read sheet music?” he asks. She nods. After 10 years of piano, she’d really better be able to. 

Ben stomps off to his suitcase, and rummages through it until he comes out with some loose leaf sheets. He plunks the wrinkled handful in front of her. 

She stares up at him mutely. It’s handwritten, with lots of angry markouts and erasures. Ben’s, she assumes. 

He makes an impatient, ‘get on with it’ gesture. 

She scans it, then hesitantly begins to pick it out. It’s not very complicated. She picks up speed, then stops.

“This is a Knights of Ren song,” she laughs. “I know this one.”

“No,” Ben says sharply. “It’s not.” 

Rey smiles at him. “Fine, it’s brand new, but it’s got the same chord progression as ‘1979,’ by the Knights of Ren. See?” She changes up the tempo just a little, humming the lyrics under her breath. “Just transposed to the piano.” 

He stands stock still for a moment, then says, “Fuck.” 

He grabs the music off the stand and crumples it into a ball.

Rey looks up at him sympathetically. “I’m sure that happens all the time,” she says. He doesn’t respond, stalking back into the kitchen. 

Rey takes the opportunity to slide out and open the bottle of water he left on the bench.

“Okay, have you got everything sorted for the evening?” she calls. 

Ben grunts in what she assumes is an affirmative. She hears a cupboard slam. Right. Time to go.

“Ring me at the shop tomorrow morning and I’ll give you an estimate,” she yells. 

No answering grunt, this time.

Rey gives a last covetous look at the piano and lets herself out. She’s got his car, after all, and that’s the real prize.


	2. Holland, 1945

**_Now_ **

They could probably afford studio space with the money they made on the Audi commercial now set to Rey’s most intimate feelings, but the band hasn’t yet moved out of the garage. For one, they’d have to move all the discarded sofas they’ve dragged in over the years, and the goal with these sofas is to minimize your body parts in contact with them. For two, the garage is free, and Grace Ellen sometimes brings tea and cake and an enthusiastic audience.

And of course, as Finn’s mother, she’d be welcome anywhere the band met.

Rose, their drummer, lies with her head on her sister’s lap. Paige is holding her mobile at arm’s length, squinting at it. She needs glasses, but she won’t wear them at her day job working at a local nursery school. Finn and Jannah are peering into Jannah’s laptop. Only Poe, their ersatz manager, is standing and watching Rey. 

Rey stands up to address them, but then she sits back down. This isn’t her presentation. This is _their_ choice. 

“So, I hope you’ve had a chance to look at the Skywalker Records proposal,” Rey says tentatively.

“Well, sure, for like three hours,” Jannah says with a bit of reproach. She has a point.

“Yeah, I didn’t send it on because I didn’t know what it meant for us,” Rey admits. “But this interview has changed the timeline. I think after what I said, I better write Luke back tonight if I still want it.”

“Well of course you want it!” Rose yelps. “Luke fucking Skywalker! He’s a legend. _Everyone_ worked with him.”

“Yeah, I don’t see how you say no?” Jannah asks. “Isn’t that the whole point of this? All these practice sessions? Driving all ‘round the country to play in a bunch of shitty pubs for piss pay?” 

Poe makes a small noise of protest, since he was the one to book all those shitty pubs, and Jannah gives him a level look. “Sorry, sweetie,” she says, not sounding very sorry at all. 

“What do you want to do?” Finn asks.

And the answer is that Rey’s not sure. She’s never even left the country, and now she’s being asked to sign away the next three months of her life to Skywalker Ranch and the big label makeover treatment. 

“I want...I want to take the next step,” Rey says. “Yeah. Like Jannah said. This is what we’ve been working for, yeah?”

And that response gets varying degrees of enthusiasm. Rose has been playing with Rey and Finn from the very beginning, but she’s always had bigger dreams than Finn. Finn’s happy to see them at practice, but happier to get a pint with them after. Rose is the one who practices by herself, who tests out new licks and works them into Rey’s existing melodies, who keeps up with the music press. Paige is there because Rose makes her come, and because she plays guitar on Sundays at their church. Jannah’s the closest thing they have to a professional; she’s recorded an album of cello solos and teaches lessons at the local community center. 

“And you’ll get to meet Leia Skywalker!” Rose gushes. “I bet she smells like orange blossoms and hope.” 

Rey forces a smile. It’s easy to just think of Luke as Luke Skywalker, record mogul. The man who tweeted a YouTube video of Rey singing a Cat Power cover in a basement pub in Hereford three months ago and changed her life. 

Leia’s harder to think about. Rey might have grown up to her voice on the radio, but she’s also heard it echoing harshly out of a mobile as Ben screamed right back. 

They didn’t meet. But they might have.

And then they didn’t. 

“Sure,” Rey says, after a pause. She can’t expand on that, since her throat has gone dry and sticky. 

“Do you think you’ll see Kylo Ren again?” Poe asks thoughtlessly.

Rose immediately hisses at him, and he schools his features into something that might, to a stranger, signal contrition. 

“No reason to think I will,” Rey responds after a moment. “It’s a big world, and I’ll be staying with the person he most wants to avoid in it.”

“Doesn’t he want to see-” Poe continues, but Finn abruptly changes the subject, rescuing Rey.

“Do you want one of us to come out with you?” he asks. “Before we start recording?”

Rey shoots Finn a grateful smile for the interruption. Poe and Jannah hadn’t known her then, and they’re naturally curious, a trait Rey would be more forgiving of were it not one shared with a great many strangers on social media. 

“I’ll be fine. It’s the MeToo era, but I haven’t ever heard of Luke doing anything unsavory to his artists,” Rey tells them. “I’ll be out there for six weeks maximum getting on our existing stuff and meeting with the industry types-”

“-and going to Disneyland, and getting _tan_ -” Rose insists.

“-and then you guys will come out when it’s time to re-record.”

They’ve got ten songs already recorded in the garage and edited on Jannah’s laptop, but one of the major inducements of Luke’s proposal is the chance to re-record in a world-class studio, with whatever additional orchestra and sound effects he and Rey can dream up. She already has champagne dreams of mandolin solos and children’s choirs on some of their tracks. 

Rey takes a deep breath. “And then hopefully, by the end, we’ll have an international tour booked. Probably as an opening act for someone on Luke’s label, so...” 

It was in the written proposal, but those words put every eye in the room on her. That’s the inflection point. They’ll need to quit their jobs, board up their flats, break up with their boyfriends (only Paige has one of those, but Rey’s strongly in favor of his disposal)--their lives will change. If they’re successful, they won’t really live in Birmingham any longer. They’ll be working musicians, living in hotels and buses and other people’s houses. They won’t have a trivia league or a Sunday dinner or a dating profile. Well. Rey doesn’t have any of those things, but her bandmates sometimes take time away from work and music, which is a valid lifestyle decision that Rey has occasionally considered.

“Book us to Carnegie Hall, it’s happening!” Jannah yells, and the evening devolves into more group hugs and victorious cursing than band practice. 

* * *

Rey drops Jannah and Finn by their flats after practice, and white-knuckles the walk from the car park to her own. It’s not a great situation, this late at night, but Rey’s been willing to take her life in her hands to upgrade from the bedsit she’d rented since leaving care to her lovely little two-bedroom end terrace. The neighborhood could be better, but she’s enjoyed having a room for her projects separate from the bedroom where she mostly fails to sleep. 

Her mobile chimes with a text as she’s wrestling the keys from her pocket, and she automatically looks at it, given the hour. It’s not a number she’s saved:

(+01-310-555-8234): <Second Sister asked me for a quote on your interview. What do you want me to say?>

Rey stares at the screen, her mind too foggy with fatigue to decipher it. Then she scrolls up the text chain and sees a few other unanswered texts over the past six months, commencing with: <This is Ben. New phone.>

Rey’s thumbs hover over the keyboard, and before she can think, she types back:

<Whatever you like. Like you always do.>

But before she can hit the return, she deletes it all. 

Rey hits the power button and shoves her mobile back into her pocket. She hasn’t ever responded, but she hasn’t changed her number, and Ben seems to take that as a license to keep talking. 

Why should she have to change her number? He’s the bastard.

She gets inside, pleased to find that her timed dimmers are working for once, and her sitting room is pleasantly lit with golden light from her variety of rescued pottery lamps. There’s a pile of mail on the floor, and she scoops it up as soon as she has her coat and handbag tossed into their appropriate floor piles. 

There’s a large vanilla envelope forwarded from the small official box Poe now runs, which is full of handwritten fan letters. That’s been the very best part of her sudden fame: people from across the U.K., America, even the Continent, writing to say that her music has meant something to them. Often it’s just quotes and hearts, but sometimes it’s art, pictures, poetry. Poe screens out the dick pictures, or maybe he’s saving them for some kind of art project that he’ll spring upon her at her next birthday party. Rey smiles as she pulls today’s envelopes out, thinking that she’ll read them before she makes her nightly attempt to fall asleep. 

Separately, there’s a white envelope with a cellophane window, the kind that often contains bills. But Rey recognizes the return address: it’s a cheque. Not the kind she cashes, though. She opens the junk drawer in her kitchen and shoves it in with the rest. 

The one-two punch of the text and the envelope are enough to convince her that sleep is a losing proposition, so Rey heads to her computer instead.

She opens her email and finds Luke’s message. She drafts and erases half a dozen replies, thinking that each one makes her sound like an uneducated peasant. Eventually she types: “I accept. Best, Rey Johnson.” That’s what he needs, right? She’ll ring his secretary or whomever tomorrow and work out the details. Productive, that’s her. 

That sorted, she next opens Twitter. Four months ago on Twitter, she had 683 followers, most of whom had attended her secondary school or were regulars at one of the three pubs in Birmingham that would book her band on days and at hours that did not conflict with her garage shift, Rose’s doorman shift, or Finn’s shift at the corner shop. 

Three months ago, she woke up, opened Twitter, and discovered that she had 18,000 new followers. When she made her way to the bottom of her mentions, she found a link to her cover of “He War,” recorded on someone’s iPhone and languishing on YouTube for over a year. 

@LukeSkywalker: [And then that blue checkmark Rey had never yet seen in her mentions] “Check out this emerging artist, @ReyJSings. Very cool!”

It was the most banal thing someone’s ever said about her music, but it hit her life like a lightning bolt. She had agents, managers, and publicists in her DMs within hours. Musicians whose songs she’d paid _money_ for retweeting Luke to drop a heart emoji or comment on the samples she’d posted to the band’s YouTube channel, haphazardly maintained by Poe in between his more regular work booking weddings and anniversary parties. 

It felt, so briefly, like flying. Like those dreams where you’ve gained conscious control and can soar over homes and office parks and do somersaults in the air. For three days she and her friends drank wine they couldn’t properly afford and imagined what they’d say to Greg James. 

And then one of their new fans found Rose’s unlocked Facebook account, and scrolled back five years. 

Now Rey has one hundred and fifty thousand followers, and she sometimes wishes she’d never picked up that guitar. 

She taps out a message to them: 

@ReyJSings: “Happy to announce I’m going to @SkywalkerRanch to work with @LukeSkywalker! See you soon, America!”

Trilla Suduri _and_ Ben Solo can suck on it. The world will hear it from her first, this time. 

* * *

**_Then_ **

The back of Rey’s neck itches the entire morning as she waits for Ben to ring and demand the status of his car. She dissembled the ignition between her usual slate of oil changes and brake services, and then she got a little carried away. Substantial parts of the transmission are now lying on a dropcloth next to the ignition. 

But when Ben finally manifests himself, it’s not on the telephone, but in the flesh. He stomps in shortly after lunch and silently surveys the field of parts Rey has arrayed around the Citroen. 

“Did all of those come out of the car?” he demands.

“Yeah.”

“When are you going to put them back?”

“Dunno.”

Ben is not accustomed to being answered like that, and he sucks on his teeth as Rey closely examines the strong string post. 

“When is it going to be done?” he asks after he can’t stand being ignored any longer.

“I told you to ring first,” Rey tells him without taking her eyes off the part. “You wouldn’t have wasted a trip. I’m going to need to order at least this part. It’ll be days.” 

“You didn’t leave your number,” Ben says peevishly, after a pause, as though the Internet is away on interlibrary loan. Rey glances up at him. He’s still dressed in anonymous, personality-free rich man’s clothing. But the way he’s twisting makes her wonder if there’s more to it.

“Pass me your mobile then, I’ll give you mine,” she ultimately says, but instead he plucks it out his pocket and holds it ready.

Rey rattles off her number, and after he types for a moment, she feels her mobile vibrate against her body. She gives him a tight smile and hopes that he’ll leave.

“Is that the only thing that’s wrong?” Ben asks, pointing to the spring. 

Rey shrugs. “It could cause the ignition problem. I’m checking the rest of the system before I decide if that’s the only thing.”

Ben shifts his weight and pauses. “I’ll wait and see if it’s something else. I’ll need to call my...the owner. If it’s a major problem.” 

Rey stares up at him. She does not fancy scrutiny whilst she disassembles as much of the engine as she can get her hands on. 

“Really, that’s not necessary. I’ll text.” 

But Ben’s made his decision. “No, it’s fine,” he says. “I was dropped off here anyway, and I’ll have to call for another car.” He looks at her intently. 

“You aren’t going to just stand there and watch me work, now?” Rey cries in protest. 

Ben lifts an eyebrow. “You don’t let customers wait on their cars?”

Rey grits her teeth and nods. 

“Won’t it be horribly boring?” she offers a last ditch plea.

“Oh, I brought my guitar along,” he says cheerfully. “I’ll just be out front.”

Rey stares at his receding back. She can’t imagine why a man on holiday would choose to spend it at a garage on the lesser edge of Birmingham, but perhaps Americans are mad for the authentic West Midlands experience. 

She returns to the transmission, but soon there are a variety of discordant notes and chords fighting with the comforting Elephant 6 playlist Rey had arranged for the day’s work. But she can hardly tell him not to make noise in a garage whilst she’s heaving auto parts about, so she has no choice but to grit her teeth as bits of random fuzz cover up the purposeful fuzz in ‘Gardenhead.’ 

After forty minutes or so, Rey hears Grace Ellen offering Ben a plate of custard creams and a stack of leftover sandwiches, and Ben’s voice responding with a great deal of charm not yet directed at Rey’s own person. After their voices fade, Rey wipes her hands and stomps off to the back office. 

She shuts the door behind her and gains Grace Ellen’s attention.

“Do _not_ give him biscuits and tea! He’s not got anything better to do with his time, evidently, and he’ll keep coming around and making noise if you feed him!” Rey hisses in a whisper, pointing through the Venetian blinds at Ben, who has wheeled one of the office chairs into the sunlight and is toying with the tuning pegs on his acoustic guitar. 

Grace Ellen blinks at her in mild surprise. 

“Well, I only thought he looked lonely, now, didn’t I?” Grace Ellen says.

Rey startles at the thought. 

“He’s not lonely, he’s rich,” she protests, and Grace Ellen recovers some of her authority to give Rey a look of mild reproach. 

Rey makes a face. 

“Fine then,” she says with an ill grace, wheeling out of the office.

She approaches Ben instead, and folds her arms.

“Do you even know how to play that thing, or are you just figuring it out?” she demands.

Ben lays the guitar on his lap and gazes up at her with a small smile dancing around the corners of his mouth. “I can play it,” he says mildly. “I’m working on a tuning.”

“Even I know how to tune a guitar,” Rey says. 

Ben snorts. “That’s what everyone thinks. Do you play the guitar too?”

Rey shakes her head. “What are you trying to play, then?” she asks.

“Nick Drake,” he says. “He made up his own tunings on several of his songs. I’m trying to recreate them.”

“Isn’t that on the Internet?” Rey asks. He shrugs as though he doesn’t care. 

Good lord, the man is bored. Or his data plan is for shit. 

“Well, go on then. Play something,” she says. Ben pauses, looking down at the strings, and then around him as though searching for an audience. 

“What do you want me to play?” he finally says, and his voice is a little nervous.

He’s interrupting her lovely Neutral Milk Hotel playlist, so she asks him if he knows anything by the band. The question draws back that toothy smile and dimples which had made such a brief appearance the day prior. 

He adjusts the tuning with much swifter fingers than he’d used before her arrival, and without any warning, launches into “Holland, 1945,” with the frenetic sound seeming to burst from under his fingers and crowd the air around them. 

She didn’t expect him to sing as well, but he sucks a single deep breath and does a creditable impression of Jeff Mangum’s reedy tenor as he rushes through the song. His elbows work frantically to keep up with the original pace of the piece. 

_The only girl I've ever loved_

_Was born with roses in her eyes..._

Rey laughs when it’s over and tells him she’ll cut him a discount if he keeps it up, and something flashes in his eyes as he agrees. 

Ben doesn’t stick to Jeff Mangum. He shows off with Nick Drake. He meanders through the Beatles catalogue for a while. Back to the future with some San Fermin. Rey’s afternoon passes very pleasantly as Ben sings out front, even if it makes her feel guilty about dissembling his car, and she ends up putting most of it back together and ordering the part he needs. 

When it’s time to close up the shop, he’s meditating on some Kurt Vile, energy now obviously spent after three hours or more of playing.

He looks happy, though, when Rey comes to stand over him in her street clothes. 

“So this is what you do, then?” Rey asks. 

“Like I said, I’m a professional musician,” he agrees. “But I also compose.” 

“Anything I’ve heard?”

“Well, the one last night,” he answers, expression dimming a bit.

Rey laughs. “Yeah, too bad the Knights of Ren beat you to it.”

He nods, smile tighter. 

“No, no, I get it,” Rey says. “It takes me months, and I’m still not happy with anything I ever do.”

“So you say,” Ben tells her. “I’d like to hear it, though.”

“You won’t,” Rey assures him. 

“And here I put myself out there all afternoon, and you won’t play me one song?” Ben protests, feinting as though to hand the guitar up to her. 

“I don’t play the guitar,” Rey smiles and protests, waving it away.

“Well, would you like to learn, then?” Ben parries right back. “It’s easier to compose on the guitar than the piano.” 

“What, do you teach as well?” Rey asks.

“No,” Ben admits. “But nobody is good at teaching guitar. You just have to suck at it for a while until you don’t. I could show you the chords and basic progressions, at least.” 

That’s not a great advertisement for his services, but Rey finds that she doesn’t enjoy the slightly doleful expression that’s come over his face, and she thinks she can tease him back into a good mood, at least. 

“I can’t pay for lessons, I’m afraid. You’ll have to finance your very expensive car repairs in some other fashion. Have you thought about advertising for your services? There aren’t enough men in the West Midlands making pretty noises.” 

“Well, I find myself in need of a pianist capable of detecting imminent copyright violations,” he responds. “Auto repair abilities notwithstanding. If I give you a few guitar lessons, will you play the piano for me? Things I’ve composed?” 

Rey squints at him, wondering if he’s flirting with her. He’s hardly done so, unless the general method of showing up at her place of work and refusing to leave is considered a romantic gesture. He _appears_ sincere. And if he fancied her, wouldn’t he just ask her to go for a drink down the pub with him or something, instead of an elaborate subterfuge involving a piano for guitar swap?

“Yeah, I could do,” Rey responds slowly. 

Ben smiles again, and this time it warms his soft brown eyes all the way through. 

“Wonderful,” he says. “We can start tonight.”

“You need a lift again, don’t you,” Rey sighs. 

“I need a lift again,” Ben agrees. 


	3. Fake Empire

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Me, hissing at myself: "You are self-indulgent and sentimental."
> 
> Also me: "Yes I am."

**_Now_ **

Although Luke’s intensely cheerful assistant warns her against becoming accustomed to it, Skywalker Records flies Rey from London to LA first class, nonstop. American Airlines, which Poe pooh-poohs as though he’s looking to develop caviar tastes, but still. Rey’s never been on an airplane before, and the flight attendants watch her knowingly as she reads the laminated safety instructions front and back immediately upon taking her seat. She drinks two of the free mimosas straightaway, then takes the champagne uncut upon the third pass. 

The spotty teenager seated to her left, on the aisle, gives Rey a look of such envy that she sneaks a glance at his parents, already swallowing their Ambien lozenges and donning sleep masks, and slips her drink to him instead. He accepts it gratefully and immediately adopts her as a close confidant and trusted friend. Rey’s more tolerant of it than usual because Preston, at least, is not afraid of plane crashes and life changes. 

Young Preston, caught in that terrible period of adolescent manhood that switches freely between sweet and sullen, is happy to hold forth on all of the things that Rey will have to do when she reaches LA. He rambles about burger restaurants, beaches, and unpermitted concert venues for nearly half an hour without stopping to ask her a question, but then the champagne starts to make him sleepy and he switches on his personal entertainment station on the seatback in front of him. Unfortunately, his tastes direct him to an entertainment program heavily featuring music videos of the Knights of Ren.

Rey has Paige’s Kindle, stocked with many historically inaccurate books involving sexually adventurous dukes, but instead Preston catches her staring at his screen in her half-tipsy, high-altitude haze. It’s like watching a car crash. She can’t stop watching Ben’s sullen snarl as he wields his Les Paul like an implement of violence. 

“They shot this video at the beach by my house,” Preston says, indicating the screen with a thrust of his chin. “I was, like, a little kid, but I remember it. I think the lead singer almost drowned. Pretty sick, right?”

Rey understands by his admiring tone that he finds Ben’s decision to shoot a music video consisting in the main of walking into the ocean, fully dressed and holding a guitar, to be a great act of artistic integrity. The idiot.

Rey makes a noncommittal noise, which has no effect on Preston’s stream of conversation. 

“I’m not really into this old stuff of theirs, though. From like, fifteen years go? Almost before I was born.” Preston’s tone now questions the wisdom of anyone who made music before Preston was available to listen to it.

“And the new album kind of sucks. No singles. I guess the instrumental stuff is fine, but the rest all sounds kind of the same. I didn’t buy it.” 

Preston’s musical assessment has been shared by most of the professional reviews, which Rey would deny under torture having read but which she has, in fact, looked up in the middle of the night when she is supposed to be sleeping.

“I guess I just really like  _ Alone _ _,_ you know? And the one that came right after it. From a few years ago.” Here Preston finally pauses to look at her. “Even though they make me sad.” 

Preston is biting his lip to see how his admission of owning feelings is received, and Rey is soft enough to answer. 

“Yeah,” she admits. “Me too. Me too.” She likes them the best, and they make her sad too. 

She orders mimosas until the flight attendant sees her sharing with Preston and won’t serve her any more. 

* * *

A driver in a Hawaiian shirt holds a sign for “R. Johnson,” and Rey is relieved of her guitar case and duffel bag. It is somehow early afternoon, even though Rey has slept and eaten nearly five meals on this same calendar day already. The alien white light of California contributes to her sense of hungover disorientation as the driver leads her to a large, anonymous van. She has a momentary panic; wait, how does she know this is the correct driver? She told all of Twitter she was flying to California, perhaps he has been waiting to murder her?

Rey’s manners will not allow her to inquire at this point, however, so she’s very nervous for the first half hour of the drive. 

She presses her nose against the windowpane to see what LA looks like. After an hour, she’s still not sure. There are cars and sun and grey concrete all around her, and in the distance, hazy yellow hills. She doesn’t know if she likes it or not. She doesn’t know whether she misses the rain and the living earth of England in February. 

Skywalker Ranch is tucked far away in the hills northwest of Los Angeles, and Rey’s legs are already cramping from so much sitting on the plane. She eyes the driver and stretches them out on the seat next to her. She’s wearing black leggings and a jumper, and she feels like a little stormcloud blown across the Atlantic. 

They turn off the highway, then wind their way inland for nearly a mile before Rey spies the famous Victorian sprawl of Skywalker Ranch. The great slate-grey turrets and spires are incongruous with the treeless yellow range behind them, but Rey’s attention is drawn to the sturdy male figure waiting at the edge of the circular drive.

Luke Skywalker is a recognizable character, even if Rey’s more accustomed to seeing him on the telly in a red-carpet-ready tuxedo than the flesh, clad in a rumpled guayabera and cargo shorts. The frumpiness of him--his beard needs trimming, and so do his toenails where they protrude from his Birkenstocks--is deeply reassuring. 

He pulls her door open and offers his hand to assist her descent. When she has her footing and her sunglasses adjusted, he extends his hand again for her handshake. When she obliges, he grips it firmly in his dry, chapped paw. He looks her up and down, and his head-to-toe assessment is thorough but not, Rey thinks, particularly intrusive. Or interested. 

“Thanks for coming,” he says, as though she’s done him a favor by coming to his family’s mansion--no, this qualifies as a  _ compound _ \--to discuss the possibility of paying her a very large sum of money to play music. 

But when he smiles at her, she finds herself analyzing the cracks around his eyes and the shape of his nose. Looking for traces of Ben. This is the man who taught Ben to write music, if the popular press is to be believed. Who taught him music theory, history, performance--and hasn’t spoken to his nephew since the day he turned eighteen and signed with Empire Records instead of the family label. 

“Well,” Luke says, turning and making eye contact with a slim young woman with her hair caught up in buns like Minnie Mouse, “Kaydel can show you to your room. Catch you at dinner--it's all served family style here at the ranch. Or maybe moonrise yoga? Bring your guitar and we’ll all howl at the moon after that. Welcome!” 

Rey manages to keep a straight face as she processes his invitation, but Luke doesn’t wait for an answer, anyway, striking back into the house, sandals slapping against his bare feet. 

He’s already thinking of the next thing he wants to do. The ineffable business of being Luke Skywalker, record mogul. 

* * *

Rey’s so tired by dinner that she gives up hope of memorizing a card’s deck of new faces; older men, mostly, introduced by Luke or each other. Sound editors and marketing executives and a few studio musicians. There’s no other “talent,” like Rey. She’s the youngest one in the room by almost fifteen years, she thinks. She’s not invisible, but she’s also not a part of it. The gazes of Luke’s other guests assess her and measure her. They belong here; she still hasn’t proven herself. 

Rey finds that she has no appetite, and she slips away after her plate of sustainable arctic char is removed by the servers. The interior of the main house is American rustic: rough stone and wood planks, but with music memorabilia and platinum records hung on the walls in lieu of the taxidermied heads of animals. Rey brushes past shadowboxes containing guitar strings and handwritten lyrics and broken drumsticks until she comes to a hall devoted to the Skywalker family. Anakin Skywalker in shirtsleeves and braces, singing to a crowd of screaming girls in beehive hairdos. Leia Skywalker with her hair to her waist, strumming a guitar as riot police advance. Luke Skywalker with his arm around Bob Dylan. 

Rey imagines her own face on the wall, another trophy for an industry that runs on processed dreams. 

Rey can’t even admit to herself what she’s looking for, until she finds it in one small framed photograph nearly hidden behind a stand lamp. Luke and Leia standing together, grinning at the camera, the Skywalker Ranch’s distinctive turrets in the background. There are balloons and streamers hung on poles around a picnic table. Leia’s hair is wrapped around her head in braids, and Luke has been caught in the moment of removing his sunglasses. Smaller and slightly out of focus, nearly out of the frame, is a small boy with dark hair parted ruthlessly for the party. He holds a ukelele and a stiff smile for the photographer. He’s the only child in the frame, even though there are six candles on the cake behind him. 

Rey puts a fingertip out to cover Ben’s face and breathes through her nose. Swallows the surge of grief and bile and anger that rises whenever she sees his picture. A second later, she guiltily jerks her finger back, worried about the smudge. 

Rey doesn’t believe in ghosts or telepathy or any of that shit, but the chill that goes down her back makes her certain Ben’s thinking of her at the same time. 

* * *

**_Then_ **

Rey coaxes Ben into stopping for a takeaway, even though he swears on God he’s got food at his place. He goes off a little green when she orders curry chips and kebabs and peas with gravy all from her favorite anonymous storefront--really lovely stuff she can’t usually afford unless she spends her day off cleaning other people’s flats for drinking money--but acquiesces without much of a fuss, even if she can tell he’s noting it all down inside as the strange ways of the English working class. 

Ben doesn’t even bat an eyelash before digging out his wallet and using a fifty quid note to pay for it all, subject to the suspicious scrutiny of the staff, and he carries their bags besides. Rey curses herself for being impressed and warns herself not to trip over the low bar she’s set. 

His cottage is cool and empty when they pull up, and Rey lingers by the car as Ben unlocks the door and flips on the lights. He’s got one of those home assistants set up now, and he yells at it to play the U2 station as he heads for his kitchen.

Ben doesn’t seem able to speak with her unless it’s on the subject of cars or music, so she dumps their food out of its paper clamshells onto real china plates, stiff and awkward under his steady regard. If he’s suffering for the lack of conversation, he doesn’t show it. His chin turns as he tracks her movements around the room 

She wants to look at her mobile or light a fag or flip on the telly--something to relieve the uncomfortable novelty of a man’s undivided attention--but as long as he does none of these things, Rey feels pinned by his regard. 

It’s not lascivious. Or even flirtatious. It’s just...present. 

It’s been ages since Rey bolted her Tesco bacon-and-egg sandwich, so she sets to devouring the whole spread. Ben eats a bite of everything on his plate with methodical precision, then abandons it in favor of pulling raw fruit and veg out of his fridge.

“Is that what you were going to feed me?” Rey asks with some derision as he stuffs produce into a large blender with some beige powder and anonymous seeds. 

“There’s steak and stuff in there too,” he replies. 

Rey can’t even bring herself to contemplate a man who would cook her a steak out of his own larder, but the buzzing of her own mobile gives her the opportunity to break eye contact with Ben and step out of the room.

His eyes narrow as she goes, but he doesn’t ask who she’s texting. 

Finn: <mum said you were kidnapped by dodgy customer please advise>

Rey laughs, looking back into the kitchen, where Ben is wiping gravy off his peas with an expression of deep distrust. She would have thought a big bloke like him would need plenty of calories to power that frame, but it must be all straight animal protein, none of the fun stuff. 

Rey: <she did not. she likes him more than i do>

Finn: <it was the implication. wyd?>

Rey wanders further into the music room and takes a seat at the piano bench. There’s new music up on the stand: tiny, precise notations crosscut with angry strikeouts and eraser marks. 

Rey: <im at his flat>

Finn: <[knife emoji]?>

Rey: <he’s a musician. he is going to give me guitar lessons>

Finn: <he’s going to give you a STD>

As if Finn has the right to get shirty with her. He’s been making repeated mistakes with Rose Tico that deeply imperil their friend group. Rey hasn’t the slightest intention of letting Ben see her naked. Sometimes, people are just kind to each other, aren’t they?

Rey: <g2g he said he can’t find a rubber for some reason>

She hits the power button before he can smash keys at her. 

Rey tries to be surreptitious about playing the first page. She holds the damper pedal down and presses the keys as lightly as she can whilst following the largest unexcised group of notes. Simple two finger chords on the right hand while the left hand picks the melody note by note in a contrasting rhythm, all in C major. But before she can really tease out the feel of it, Ben pops in from the kitchen and snatches the music off the stand.

“Oh god, don’t look at that crap,” he says, wadding it up in disgust. Before she can attempt a rescue, he takes the sheets off to the bin and tosses them in with all the veg scraps from dinner. 

“Why not keep it?” Rey protests. “How long did you spend working on it?”

“The whole fucking morning, and nothing was useable at all,” he grouses, pacing back through the room. “I thought hard about looking up the trumpet on YouTube, that’s how much I hate the piano right now.” 

Rey smiles at him, and he gives her an arch look in return. “I said I’d show you how to play the guitar, anyway. I need to work up some warm feelings about at least one instrument today. Maybe your enthusiasm will recommit me.”

She’s dubious about that proposition; Rey took her ten years of piano mostly under protest, and she never learned to love Bach or Rachmaninoff the way she was supposed to. Learning guitar is probably much less fun than listening to the guitar, and certainly than to listening to someone good at the guitar, like Ben.

But before she can suggest that he simply agree to perform for her in exchange for her (still theoretical, at this point) piano services, he is unlatching his guitar case and plunking the instrument into Rey’s lap. 

He pulls the whole bench back away from the piano by its legs, Rey included, and then kneels directly behind her. 

Rey feels like she ought to object; the position is going to be murder on his knees, and it puts his head and torso right up against her back. But something freezes her in place as he reaches around her to adjust the tuning by ear and then pull the instrument back against her belly. 

Rey places her arms as she’s seen musicians do: right elbow resting on the body, left fingers pressing the frets. It feels almost too big for her, like holding a squirming nursery school child in her lap. 

Ben casually touches her to adjust her position; he pulls her shoulders back and presses her thumb into the neck of the guitar. 

“You’ll want a smaller instrument someday,” he says airily, as though assuming that Rey will take to the guitar like a bird to flight. “This is a jumbo acoustic. Not ideal for fingerpicking.”

“Why do you play it then?” Rey asks, deeply suppressing the urge to fidget under the sensation of Ben’s big, warm hand pressing hers against the wood. 

The instrument is scuffed and nicked in several places where the varnish has worn thin. She doesn’t know from guitars to know if it’s a nice one, but it’s an old one. 

“Nothing but fucking sentiment,” Ben says, but he doesn’t seem pressed about it. “It belonged to my grandfather.” 

Something about that simple statement makes her wariness relax another fraction. He likes the guitar, he likes music. It’s an honest vulnerability, and Rey’s a sucker for men who’ll leave themselves open for the counterpunch. 

“Alright,” Rey says, looking down at her hands. She tentatively runs the edge of her thumb over the strings, and they vibrate in perfect standard tuning.

“You know the notes of the open tuning?” Ben asks, and Rey nods. “Each fret is a halftone. You can play 95% of the stuff on the radio with a standard tuning. Ready to stretch your fingers? Let’s do C major.” 

His hand slides around to press on her fingers. He pries them apart and splays the first three fingers of her left hand in an arch across the fingerboard. 

“Keep up that arch. Don’t let your bridge collapse,” he scolds her. “Make your fingers nice round shapes and hold the note with your fingertips.”

His words have a singsong, rote quality to them. 

“Ouch,” she says mildly as he holds the tender edges of fingers, just above her nailbed, into the sharp metal strings. 

“You’ll get callouses if you practice enough,” Ben responds, unaffected. 

Rey grunts, then runs her thumb across the strings again. There’s a sour note where she doesn’t have the fifth string compressed over the fret, and Ben’s heavy fingers adjust hers. She tries another time, and this time the chord rings true.

She can’t help but grin. She strums again. Then picks out the root, third, and fifth. 

“Loosen up your wrist,” Ben tells her, shaking her shoulder. “Make your fingers strong and keep your arm loose.” 

Rey looks over Ben’s forearm as he positions her hand over the strings. The sleeve of his black t-shirt is riding up, and she can see the veins standing out over his muscles. He played for hours this afternoon, and his fingers aren’t blistered. 

“Okay,” he says, once he finally has her arranged to his apparent satisfaction. “This is your position.” His hair brushes against her ear as he pulls back. 

“Right,” she says. “What next?”

Ben shrugs, and she can feel the motion against her back and shoulders.

“Memorize all the chords. Practice until your fingers know them.”

His tone of voice says he’s teasing her.

“Wow, thanks for all your help,” she drawls out. “I guess I can take it from here.”

“I told you there’s no such thing as a good guitar teacher,” he chuckles until Rey twists her neck to wrinkle her nose at him. “Oh, did you want to learn a song?”

“I did think I’d be working on Clapton by now,” Rey says, pretending to be very thoughtful about it. “Maybe one of the easier ones, like Bell Bottom Blues. I mean, it’s been almost fifteen minutes. Which one of these strings do I hit to make the little squealing sound?”

“I thought we’d do squealing noises on lesson two,” Ben says, and he says it lightly, but when the words are out in the air, Rey feels her cheeks heating. 

He pauses, like he just heard it too. He coughs.

“So, Derek and the Dominoes?” Rey prompts, bailing him out. 

“Hmm, how about this one,” he says, reaching around her again. His fingers walk on the E string. Half note half note. Quarter quarter quarter quarter. “I. Like. Peanut butter.” His voice is completely deadpan. 

Rey snickers so hard she’s afraid of cracking him with the back of her head. 

“Oh, you know that one too! It’s the very favorite of the three-year-olds on their first piano lesson.” 

“Peanut butter this week, Derek and the Dominoes next week,” he promises. Rey obediently walks her fingers on the strings, holding the C major chord again. 

Ben waits for her to crack. 

“Come on,” she finally huffs. “Just one real song?” 

“Only because you’re such a promising student,” he murmurs in faux solicitude. “Do you like R.E.M.?”

When she responds positively, he gives her a lengthy commentary on the career and talents of Peter Buck whilst rooting through his guitar case for lined paper and pencil. 

He draws two chords out on the paper, two more below the first line, then carelessly scrawls “Everybody Hurts” across the top in lovely, flowing handwriting. 

“Just two chords on the verse,” he says, putting the sheets in front of her. “Try these.”

Rey frowns down at her hand as she holds the D major, then G major. Her fingers are used to the spread on the piano, but holding them in place makes them cramp. Ben reaches around from her right and pulls her chin away to look at the paper instead. 

“Don’t look at your hands,” he says. “You have to feel it. Close your eyes if you have to.” 

His fingers have hard, cool calluses on them, but her face tingles where he touched it. Seeing feels like one sense too many, so she follows his advice. Her fingers fumble on the strings, but she can hear, distantly, the echo of the song in her mind. D, then G. 

She hears Ben stand up behind her, walk a couple of steps away, and then return. He presses a guitar pick into her right hand. She can feel him curled over her, his mouth only a couple of inches away from her hair, as he watches her fingers move. 

“See if you can do it. D and G,” he urges her. “Your mind knows how the notes go up and down the strings.”

She switches back and forth with her left hand and mostly forgets about her right, until she realizes that she can hear the melody strong and clear. 

And then, behind her, Ben’s voice, crooning, “When the day is long, and the night, the night is yours alone…”

For ten seconds or less, his smooth, silky voice matches the music she’s painstakingly pulling out of the guitar. It makes her shiver, shaking her hands on the strings and curling through her breasts and throat. 

She lets her arm fall over the instrument. 

Ben stands up, steps back.

“Did that throw you off?” he asks, and his voice sounds a little dry. 

“No, I-” Rey’s own voice feels too tight. “It’s nice. Your voice. You’re a good singer,” she finishes lamely. 

She spins on the bench, propping the guitar up on her knee. 

She hasn’t been able to see his face while they both labored over the guitar, but it’s more distant than she might have expected.

“Thanks,” Ben says curtly, as though impatient with any praise. “Go ahead and sing while you practice, if you can. It will get you used to thinking about three systems at once.” 

Rey offers up the guitar to him. “Could be a few days til I can practice. I’ve seen plenty of guitars at the pawn shop down the street, not too dear, so I can get one next payday…”

But Ben sneers at that. “You can’t learn on some piece of crap that won’t even hold a tune,” he says, as though his mechanic is far too important to learn to play on an ordinary guitar. “Borrow that one. Just bring it with you to your shop in case I need it.” 

“Oh but you can’t--your grandfather’s guitar-” Rey protests, but Ben is already walking out of the room. 

“You already have my car!” he calls from the kitchen. “And you need to practice at least an hour a day. More is better. Try for more. I’ll be able to tell if you don’t.”

Rey sputters in protest. “But why?” 

Ben reappears with a bottle of water and leans in the doorway. 

“I’m here for three months,” he says. “If you work hard, you’ll be able to play anything you like by then. You’re already a good musician.” 

Rey’s forehead creases as she tries to imagine why he would care whether she is or isn’t playing the guitar when his holiday is over.

“But what about you?” she asks. 

His throat moves as he swallows, and he wipes his mouth with the back of his forearm.

“Me?” he asks, confused. 

“What do you want to do? What are you trying to write?” she asks. 

He winces and looks away. “I guess I’ll know it when I hear it,” he says, voice falling off. He scrubs the hair back from his face. “I hope I do. I just want to like music again. I just want-” 

He doesn’t finish the thought, staring out the window at where the early summer sunlight is at last giving way. 

In the end, it’s Rey who has to excuse herself again to carry his guitar home, propped in the passenger seat. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Ben is making notes for the piano line of Fake Empire, which is easy enough for even a total piano novice like *cough* me to play. There's a good tutorial [here ](https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=1&ved=2ahUKEwj7tIaijNXnAhVBRK0KHSthAHwQwqsBMAB6BAgJEAQ&url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.youtube.com%2Fwatch%3Fv%3DlBnioErBc98&usg=AOvVaw1KAtvQBHcJ-ABEI9dlrkGi).
> 
> If you're learning guitar, R.E.M. is a great source for the beginner! A lot of the rhythm guitar lines make heavy use of open chords.


	4. Motion Sickness

_Now_

“So, is ‘Motion Sickness’ about Kylo Ren?” 

Rey should remember not to grimace, because this time she’s on camera, but she can’t help herself. She’s usually got better charge of her face, but something about this place is stripping her down to her skin. She misses her friends. She misses England and rain and feeling like herself. 

“Sorry,” Jyn tells her, even though she doesn’t sound very sorry at all. “You know I have to ask. It would be journalistic malpractice not to. Would you prefer to talk about 'Night Shift?' I'd be happy to get some quotes about how young you were five years ago.”

Rey flicks her eyes over the seasoned documentarian. Jyn Erso has been dissecting rock stars since before Rey was born, and Rey knows that any apparent attack of transparency is likely another tactic in Erso’s well-equipped arsenal. 

“If you just explain that, doesn’t it make it awkward for me to tell you?” Rey counters, amused despite herself. The other woman waves her hand dismissively.

“Nah, we’ll edit that part out if I get you to spill your guts, and it’ll look like you’re just dying to tell me all your secrets.”

Rey laughs, like she’s supposed to. 

“I’m not, though,” she protests. 

This is what you get when you’ve drawn the eye of Luke Skywalker. You get studio musicians with credits going back before your birth fine-tuning your songs. You get an assistant who shows up with armfuls of vintage clothes to create a “look” more compelling than “not naked.” You get long talks over expensive kombucha about your career goals and musical aspirations with the man himself. 

You also get Jyn Erso following you around with a microphone and a videographer, poking at your tender places. 

“Too bad,” Jyn says, now devoid of sympathy. “You’re going to have to open up a little about your creative process, or this is going to be a very boring documentary.” 

“I’m happy to talk about my creative process,” Rey argues, shifting on Luke's stamped-leather sofa and curling her feet underneath her. She knows she’ll probably look like a child on the video, but Jyn’s merciless gaze has her on the defensive. “I just don’t think you get anywhere by starting with what a song is ‘ _about_.’”

Rey takes more care with her appearance these days. Nobody cares what their mechanic looks like under the overalls, but Jyn’s been following her around for most of the past fortnight, and she feels less like an obvious fraud when she keeps her eyes haloed with black pencil and her body covered by Kaydel’s collection of vintage biker jackets. 

Jyn looks marginally more interested at Rey’s theory, and makes a ‘keep going’ gesture as she stands up to check the angle on the video. 

“An author is an unreliable narrator of his or her own experiences,” Rey continues. “Even more so for a musician.”

“Why is that?”

“It’s the medium. Whatever you felt when you started writing the song, you have to change that to make it fit with the notes and the words that you think evoke whatever you’re trying to cause the audience to feel. And then, of course, you don’t know how the listener is actually going to feel, what they’ve brought to the experience. It could be different day to day. It’s different every time you play, and every time someone listens.”

“But it has to start somewhere,” Jyn argues. “It all starts with how someone felt that made them want to write the song, doesn’t it?”

Rey shrugs. “Who cares what the artist felt, sometime, a long time ago? It got filtered through the sound and the time and the listener. It’s all fourth hand. You lose the original intention. If there’s any emotion left, it’s in the listener now.”

Jyn’s eyes narrow at her. Her hair is steel grey but her shoulders are slim and straight, and she looks ready to throw down with Rey on this point. It’s the best time Rey’s had in an interview so far.

“So you’re saying that if ‘Motion Sickness’ is about love, or about Kylo Ren, it’s only in the mind of the listener?” Jyn asks skeptically. 

Rey crosses her arms over her chest. The old leather of the jacket is cracking and hard, but Rey loves the way it feels like armor. Like it’s kept more than one person safe. 

“I’m saying there’s no such thing as a love song.”

* * *

“Hey kiddo,” Luke says, slouching up to her the next time Rey manages to evade Jyn. “You got a minute?”

He says this as though Rey and every other person in this compound is not at his immediate disposal. He’s got a syrup stain on the folded collar of his floral shirt, and careers are made and broken on his word. 

But Rey has realized that Luke likes to pretend to this absent-minded professor figure, and it’s her job to play along, 

So she responds cheerfully, and he leads her downstairs to one of the below-ground studio spaces in the Technical Building. 

She’s been staying in one of the guest bedrooms in the main house, and even though the dressers were empty and the sheets freshly anonymized when she arrived, it still has the uncomfortable feeling of someone else’s home. She’s competing for the hot water in the mornings with a record mogul. She’s drooling into pillows Leia Skywalker has probably drooled on too. There’s a varsity water polo pennant from 2003 on the wall that Rey strongly suspects belonged to Ben Solo. 

It’s more comfortable in the Technical Building. She’s not the only one working on an album there: she’s spotted vaguely familiar faces and names going in and out of the sound stages and editing rooms, working on the business of music recording. She earns a pleasant corporate nod as she reports there each morning after breakfast, and when she leaves before dinner. This is the first time Rey hasn’t worked for a wage since she was fifteen years old, and the routine of it is reassuring to the part of Rey that still worries that she’s not saving for next month’s rent. 

Luke leads her not to one of the recording studios, but to one of the dozens of editing rooms. He enters without knocking, but the sole occupant of the small space spins in her chair and smiles up at him anyway.

Oh. Some of the air departs Rey’s lungs in a hurry. 

Leia Skywalker is still beautiful in her late sixties. That famous long hair is piled up on top of her head in a coiled braid, and she’s not wearing any makeup with her ocean-colored dupioni silk pajamas. 

Rey manages to extend a shaky hand for her to shake, but Leia brushes right past it in lieu of a gentle, encompassing hug that would be motherly if Rey didn’t have a foot of height on the woman. 

Rose was wrong. Leia doesn’t smell like orange blossoms and hope. She smells like chamomile essential oil, marijuana, _and_ hope. 

“I’m Rey,” she says once Leia pushes her back to arms-length to examine her. 

“Oh, I know,” Leia murmurs, studying her face with evident pleasure. “I’ve seen your videos. I have YouTube.” 

“You say that like it’s a fancy subscription service,” Luke teases her. “Like you got the YouTube in a swag bag.”

“Well, I’ve been to several of Susan Wojcicki’s deck parties, so maybe I did,” Leia retorts, unperturbed. 

Rey is trying hard to remember how to breathe. 

“I asked Leia to listen to some of the samples you’ve recorded and give her thoughts,” Luke says airily. “She’s got a great ear for album compilations.” 

Leia gives Rey a glance that evokes a shared musician’s camaraderie against a producer who, after all, merely makes the money off their art. Rey thinks. It’s possible Leia is only checking that Rey will not faint. 

“I have some thoughts,” Leia proclaims. “I think there’s at least eight useable tracks in there, with a little polishing, which means Luke can put out a full LP. But I’d like to see you play first. Do you prefer piano or guitar?”

“I compose on both, but when we perform I play rhythm guitar,” Rey tells her. 

“Whatever you’re comfortable with, dear,” Leia says, even though nothing about playing for Leia Skywalker is comfortable. Every movie set in the 1960s features Leia’s voice and folk guitar growling about justice. She was the soundtrack to an era. Literally shed blood against the war in Vietnam. Against racism. Against sexism. Against most of the isms that divided the world. 

So Rey’s ankles wobble as she goes to retrieve her guitar from the sound stage, and she stuffs herself into the tiny closet along with the Skywalker twins, and coughs nervously as she checks the tuning. 

She knows Leia’s already heard it if she’s been listening to the tracks she’s recorded since arriving at Skywalker Ranch, but she launches into “Library Magic,” since she trusts her fingers more than her voice at this point, and it doesn’t require much in the way of vocal gymnastics. 

Leia leans forward and props her hands under her chin as Rey sings, “Being alone isn’t lonely/ It’s sought after like a holiday/ Being alone is my vacation/ Postcard dreams of a full-size bed,” and Rey worries about the way Leia’s head tilts, bird-like, to study her. 

Rey wants to stop after three verses and beg for mercy, but Leia and Luke watch her in stillness as she somehow completes the song and flourishes as she picks off the last note.

She waits there for their verdict like a prisoner in court, but all Luke says after the vibration of the strings dies is,

“You’ll want something smaller for the fingerpicking. Maybe a dreadnought. Ask Kaydel to take you down the hill tomorrow.” 

Rey blinks at the words, like a poke at a nearly-healed bruise. 

“...okay,” she agrees. She doesn’t mind the idea of acquiring other guitars. There’s only been the budget, really. She could get another acoustic for fingerpicking. It’s the rational thing to do. There’s silence as both she and Luke turn to look at Leia. 

Leia’s lower lip is thrust up against the top, as though she is struggling with a stronger emotion.

“Oh, give me a minute,” the older woman says. She sighs. “I guess it really is true, then?”

Rey’s back stiffens. “What is true?”

“My son taught you to play.” 

Rey’s shoulders hunch to nearly her ears before she consciously relaxes them. 

“How can you possibly know that?” she says, in a tone that’s more aggressive than she’d like. 

Leia smiles at her in a gentle way, and leans her cheek into her fist. “It’s like an accent, I suppose. The way you hold the guitar. The way you sing while you play. Something in the music.”

Luke has his hands shoved into his pockets and he’s staring at his feet. Rey feels like the room is too small for this conversation, or that they are too big for it. She doesn’t want either of them thinking about this. 

“You don’t like that,” Leia observes. “It’s just a fact of your history, but you don’t want to think about it. Why?”

Does Leia want to know about Rey, or Ben? Is she supposed to be telling on herself, or Ben? 

She wonders whether Leia still talks to Ben. (There’s the more terrifying question, which is whether Leia and Ben talk, have ever talked, _will talk_ about Rey.). 

Rey does her best to back out of this perilous conversation. 

“It’s only a thing they ask women,” she says stiffly. “Who made them who they are. This is my own music. It shouldn’t matter where it started.”

Leia’s eyebrows arch at Rey presuming to lecture her about what women face in the industry, but it’s Luke who responds. “Nobody comes from nowhere, kiddo. You think I did it myself? My dad’s royalties paid for this place. And him? He wouldn’t have had a sound if he hadn’t been paling around with Muddy Waters and Carl Perkins.” 

“Rey, is it such a bad thing that you sound a bit like him? I’m not just asking as his mother. I want you to be honest about your music. You need to know where you fit into the great big scheme of things. If you’re trying to become the next Billie Eilish, that’s not who you are.” 

Rey laughs to cover the quaver in her voice. “Well, Ben’s made three albums since I last saw him. Why doesn’t anyone ever ask him whether he learned from me?” 

“Well, now I will,” Leia vows, and Rey winces, because that’s not what she wanted. Even Luke looks mildly alarmed. 

Rey’s been able to pretend that Ben’s got no idea at all what she’s been up to for the past five years. It’s been a more fragile illusion as her profile has risen, and if Luke does put out her album, it’s a ridiculous concept that nobody will tell him. As if she didn’t know he was looking. Second Sister rang him, didn’t they?

But _Leia_ calling him out on it...it’s a chain of events starting like a stone rolling down a hill. She looks at Leia helplessly until the other woman reaches out to tap the head of Rey’s guitar, still in her lap.

“Rey...if you don’t want to be connected with Ben, we’ll try to market you that way.” 

Leia leans closer.

“But in that case...maybe you shouldn’t still be playing my father’s guitar?”

* * *

Jyn is lurking at the exit when Rey gets her opportunity to flee. She needs to get outside, go for a walk, get out of a building too full of Skywalkers and their history. It’s oppressive.

“So, that was ‘Library Magic,’ wasn’t it?” Jyn says cheerfully, not at all deterred from the way Rey is nearly jogging in the opposite direction. “Did Leia like it? Is that line about how being alone isn’t lonely a reference to the Knights of Ren album?”

“Oh for fuck’s sake,” Rey grouses, slowing down to hit the exit door to the California sunshine. “Please explain to me why everyone gives a shit what I think about Ben. He’s got two Grammys. There are plenty of other opinions in the world besides mine.” 

“You think that’s it?” Jyn asks, face surprised. She props the door open for Rey to step out and put her head between her knees. Rey sees her wave off the videographer, and she feels a surge of gratitude to the woman, who has been nothing but a hardass over the previous week. “You’ve got some good tracks out there, Rey, and your career is promising, but it’s not really about what you think.”

“Explain it to me, then!” Rey begs. Jyn flexes her shoulders and squints down the hill towards the distant sea. 

“Because Ben Solo was rock and roll royalty, and instead of writing the next generation’s version of ‘Imagine,’ he made 15 years worth of bratty music for angry young men. Stadium anthems for kids who can’t define the word irony. Interesting music with excellent technical qualities and no heart.” 

Jyn pokes Rey in the shoulder. “And then, all of a sudden, he started writing love songs that make me want to eat a whole cheesecake and cry.” Rey frowns and pulls away, because this is more insight than anyone has shown her in the three months since anyone has asked her questions. 

“They don’t just want to know whether your songs are about him. They want to know whether his songs are about _you_.” 

Rey swallows hard. “Why don’t you ask him, then?”

“I’d love to,” Jyn says with a smile. “But he barely does press. I did one interview with him...oh...ten years ago. He wore that fucking helmet the whole time, and he had a handler with him who stared at me like he was imagining my gruesome death.” 

Rey laughs despite herself. Jyn is hamming it up a bit, but she can’t help but like the woman. 

“You know what?” Rey asks, before she can talk herself out of what is a very terrible idea. “Ben’s just very shy. You should try texting him instead. I’m sure it’ll be much more revealing.”

“Oh?” Jyn says, voice skeptical. “Do you have his number?”

“Only off the record. But I’m sure he’s dying to weigh in on his career. He’s so misunderstood. He just needs the opportunity to talk.” 

Jyn’s expression is faintly impressed, and her smile rather evil. 

Rey pulls her mobile out and recites the numbers on her last text message to Jyn’s microphone.

“Please, feel free to share it with your friends as well. I think the world really needs to hear his answers to your questions.”

* * *

**_Then_ **

“You’re a nuisance,” Rey tells Ben, shaking a damp washcloth at him. He dodges the filthy drops, cringing dramatically. 

“Don’t you have a break soon?” he whinges.

Ben has been coming around every day after lunch, wheedling sandwiches out of Grace Ellen, reordering Rey’s playlists, asking questions about the car that she’s already answered, and generally being a pest. 

She can’t concentrate while he’s on the premises. 

He treats her job as a hindrance to practicing the guitar with him--it’s not clear whether he ascribes her any particular motives to taking up a new instrument at eighteen, or whether it’s simply what he would most prefer to do, and he has the confidence of a spoiled white man to assume that the priorities of others align with his own. It’s obvious that he has never for once considered that he might not be welcome to hang around her place of employment for hours a day, looking like he rolled out of a cologne advertisement. 

She supposes he must do his shopping in the mornings, because she doesn’t see him then and he has food and things at his cottage. And he’s likely trying to compose, still, although it seems like a zero sum game. He’s ripped up everything he’s written down, and he has yet to actually request her accompaniment on the piano, as he proposed. 

“I’m working through the afternoon to get off early,” Rey tells him. “Go home.” 

“I’m _bored_ _,_ ” he whinges again, with the petulance of a teenaged boy on a beach holiday with his family. 

“Christ on a _bike_ _._ Go grab another liter of oil from that stand over there and make yourself useful,” Rey snaps from her position under the bonnet of a filthy Peugeot. 

Ben complies sullenly. 

“So when do you get off this afternoon, then?” he asks. 

Rey doesn’t look at him as she refills the oil in the car. “Six. But I can’t practice tonight. I have to meet my mates down at the pub. It’s karaoke night.”

“Oh,” Ben says, and then nothing else. 

Rey twists back and gets an eyeful of his face, which is so transparently disappointed that Rey cringes, then curses herself. It’s not her fault he’s got nothing better to do with his life. 

“It’s Tuesday,” she says lamely. “We go every Tuesday.”

“I see,” he says. 

It hasn't actually been terrible all afternoon. Ben retrieved his guitar from Rey's backseat and sang Elliott Smith like a sad angel until Grace Ellen threatened him if he made her cry. He only makes her teeth itch when he's not singing. 

“It’s Finn and Rose--Finn whose mum is Grace Ellen, who you met, and Rose, if he hasn’t cocked that up again. Usually a couple of mates from our secondary.” 

“Uh huh.” 

Of course Ben doesn’t care. Finn had come around the day prior on his lunch break, and he and Ben had had a stare-off like two strange tomcats passing in a narrow alley. If they’d had fur to puff, they would have doubled in size. 

Finn parked himself in Rey’s personal space whilst telling stories about their primary school days--and making it sound very recent and pressing what Rey had done in KS2. Ben, for his part, had a lot of pointed questions about who was caring for the newsagent’s in Finn’s absence. 

“I couldn’t practice tonight anyway,” Rey finally explains. “My fingers are like raw sausage.”

That gets Ben to unwind his arms from across his broad chest and demand to see. He seizes her left hand and plucks the work glove off and tosses it to the ground while Rey squirms and protests. 

He examines her fingertips critically, forefinger to pinkie. Then laughs. 

“I think you’ll live,” he says derisively. 

She really has been practicing. A lot. But not past the point where it hurts. She does have a blister on the tip of her ring finger, though, and she points it out. It burst that morning, and there’s a tiny oval of pale flesh right below the edge of her nailbed. 

“Poor baby,” he mocks, and pulls her wrist nearer to him. His other hand closes around her palm as he yanks her close. He goes nearly cross-eyed to look at her little dot of a blister, where the strings have cut her for lack of a callus. Rey produces a startled giggle at his intensity, but the sound dies with an embarrassing gasp when Ben closes his lips over the tip of her finger.

The small hurt of the wound is lost in the wet heat of his mouth.

His thick, dark lashes are nearly brushing his cheeks before he looks up at her, keeping them low over hooded eyes. 

Oh, Rey thinks. Oh, it’s like that. 

His lips are full and soft, but there’s the small scrape of his lower teeth across her fingernail. 

Oh. 

His stare is challenging as it meets hers, even if his cheeks are reddening to match the way she’s certain her own are. She feels like a struck match, with the flame catching around her head and shoulders. 

When he releases her, her mind fills in the small wet sound his mouth makes, even if her ears can’t pick it up. His slow smile is vulpine.

She’s known him for a week. And most of the time, she’s immune to it. That energy that Ben carries with him, even when he’s doing nothing more than wasting her time. She feels that he is just an ordinary person, the way she is an ordinary person. 

But sometimes there are these moments when he seems to suck up all the oxygen in the room and leave her panting for breath, when she can’t look away, even though she knows it’s dangerous to get too close to him. When he pins her down from across the room and she can’t move away. It’s worse because he knows it. He’s always looking right back whenever she can’t stop staring at him. 

“Do you want to come along too?” she blurts, feeling sunburned across her entire body. 

Ben shrugs in elaborately feigned indifference, although his eyes are still glowing on her. “Yeah sure,” he says. “I don’t have anything better to do.” 


	5. Empire State of Mind

**_Now_ **

The texts buzzing on Rey’s mobile jolt her awake before she reasonably ought to be, considering the combination of jet lag and adrenaline that has wreaked havoc on her already irregular sleep habits. 

Rey snatches it off the nightstand before it can wake Rose and Paige, who are packed in next to her on the other side of the queen bed in Rey’s room at the main house. Accomodations for Rey’s bandmates were provided by Skywalker in more remote building outfitted with four bunks to a room. Rather than share with strangers, the Tico sisters elected to make their recording stay a permanent slumber party. 

Rose makes a sleepy noise to Rey’s left and burrows further under the covers, leaving only tufts of violet hair visible at the edge of the duvet. Rose bounced off the plane two weeks ago fully-charged and ready to take on the musical world. This manifested in dyeing her hair pink in the bathroom sink their first night, staining the sink, and mortifying Paige, who felt compelled to confess immediately to Luke Skywalker the next day. 

Not the worst thing to happen to or in a Skywalker Ranch sink, was his analysis. 

“Fuck the man,” Rose says every time she dyes her hair another color now, in a frequency of nearly once a week. 

Finn nervously confided that she’d used those same words to quit her doorman job to go to California. 

They’re all handling it in different ways. Finn’s deadly serious about every detail and practicing hours a day. Poe’s been trying to convince everyone they meet that he’s already a big deal, and Rey hopes he doesn’t get caught trying to poach clients or they’re likely to be thrown out. Paige threw up from nerves before dinner the first night and couldn’t speak a word to Leia Skywalker when they were introduced. Rose, for her part, might as well tattoo ‘YOLO’ across her chest, and might in fact do so if not watched carefully.

Only Jannah seems serenely unaffected. She is still sleeping peacefully on Rey’s chaise lounge, silk sleep mask and hair bonnet securely in place and expression beatific. 

She should be more like Jannah, Rey thinks, having delayed review of the text messages as long as she can. Jannah doesn’t sweat any of this.

An unknown number. 

(424) 555-1003: <This is Ben. New phone number.>

(424) 555-1003: <Did you happen to give my old one to a journalist?>

(424) 555-1003: <Possibly several journalists?>

Rey can’t help but snicker when she sees it. 

“Wha’s funny…?” Paige asks, flopping to her side and peering at Rey. Yesterday, Kaydel told Paige that she looked like Sissy Spacek in Coal Miner’s Daughter, pre-fame, and begged her to get a haircut and a new wardrobe. Paige said that was better than Sissy Spacek in Coal Miner’s Daughter, post-fame, and she’d be keeping her bangs, thanks. 

Paige didn’t come in until almost four in the morning, and Rey thinks that she and Kaydel managed to reach some kind of accomodation, one that left Paige in possession of a number of new pairs of blue jeans from the wardrobe closet and also a love bite Paige will need to hide before Rose wakes all the way up. 

Good for her, Rey thinks. At least one of them is getting laid. Rey doesn’t dare, for fear that Jyn will catch her on tape, and Rose seems to be hopeful that past mistakes with Finn will resume. 

Jannah, for her part, has announced a “don’t shit where you eat” policy that Rey enthusiastically seconded and the other members pretended not to have heard. As if Rey isn’t an object lesson on dating musicians. 

Rey’s phone buzzes one more time.

(424) 555-1003: <Are you in LA?>

“Nothing,” Rey tells Paige. “I’m getting up. Luke wants to talk before we shoot the video.”

* * *

Rey is surprised to find Luke noodling on an old Stratocaster when she gets sufficient coffee in her system to be a reasonable facsimile of an awake person and heads down to the sound stage. 

He’s listening on headphones, but when he sees her, he flips a switch and the sounds of her vocal track to ‘Night Shift’ fills the room. 

She’ll never be used to the sound of her recorded voice. She wants to bleach her ears. She wants to gargle oven cleaner. It doesn’t sound like her. She can hear every flaw, every breath, every imperfection. She has to change the channel on the telly every time that Audi advert comes on. She turns bright red at the mere fact that any human being, much less Luke Skywalker, is compelled to listen to her unnatural noise. 

“Hey kiddo,” he says, letting his fingers dance down the strings. She recognizes the riff; one of his studio musicians, a gruff, block-faced Boomer named Wedge, suggested a more complex guitar solo in the third act of the song. Releasing any amount of control is painful, but she’s tried to be open and welcoming with all suggestions she’s received. Putting someone else’s guitar line into her song is…more difficult. 

“I think this is the one for the Grammy voters,” Luke says, flipping another switch and restoring the rhythm guitar line as well. “We’ll put out the radio edit of ‘Motion Sickness’ this week, and start circulating this as a single by June.” 

Rey reels a bit from all three predicates in that statement. Her mind flails to grab at any of them, and settles on, 

“This one? Really? Isn’t it a little…” 

Intimate. Raw. Mean. Rey wasn’t even sure it would make it onto the album. The first time she played it for Rose, they had to quit practice early and eat cake for dinner. 

“It hits like an atom bomb,” Luke says with gentle satisfaction, tipping a few toggles on the multi-effect processor with his bare big toe. “It won’t do as well on the radio, but critics will like it, and that will drive a lot of downloads.”

He plays the riff again, and nods. 

“Can we get your lead guitar back down here this morning to re-record? I’ve got some issues.” 

Rey smiles apologetically. “I’m sure she can. We’ve got to be downtown around ten for the video shoot, but that’s--”

“Ah, crap,” Luke says. “You probably need to leave in an hour, then. Look, do you want me to have Wedge record it, and your girl can try to brush up on it for the tour?” 

Rey hesitates on that--every other track on the album is _her_ band, that _she_ picked, and she’s not wild about allowing anyone else into her liner notes. 

“You’ve got a good team,” Luke says, sympathetically. “But she’s not the next Jimmy Page.” He runs his fingers down the neck in the opening notes of ‘Since I’ve Been Loving You.’

“Was that a dad joke?” Rey deadpans, surprising him. 

“Ha! It should have been,” Luke smirks. He runs off another flourish. 

“I didn’t realize you…” Rey says, although when she thinks about it, of course he’s got to play. His whole family is in music, he produces music, how could he not play music?

“Just for fun,” he says. “Someone needed to keep the home fires burning. So, you gonna approve the new solo?”

Rey gnaws a knuckle. “Can you play it again? Wedge’s version? So I can hear it?” 

Luke grins at her. “Not so often I get asked to play. Twist my arm.” 

He stands up for it now, and puts the whole thing back together- the vocal track, the rhythm guitar line, the percussion, the keyboard. 

When Not-Rey’s voice reaches the first chorus and lilts, “in five years, I hope the songs feel like covers/ dedicated to new lovers,” Luke hits the fuzz pedal and fills the room with guitar grit. On the second chorus, he moves his hand down the neck and knees the whammy bar to pluck out the slow, wailing solo that bridges to the third chorus. 

It is better. It’s probably better than Paige can realistically play. Paige has gone from ‘Agnus Dei’ to Death Cab for Cutie in less than two years, but she’s still shaky on electric effects in general. 

Maybe Finn can manage something similar on the keyboard. She’ll ask. 

“You’re right,” she admits. “Let’s add it to the recording.”

Luke nods, pleased. “Good. A little more fuzz, too. If you’re going to throw musical mud pies at my nephew, you might as well put plenty of dirt in them.” 

He sees her stiffen, and gives her a knowing look. “Oh, am I supposed to pretend I don’t know?”

“Nobody’s pretending. I’m not trying to send a message, or whatever you think I’m doing.” 

He gives her a dismissive wave as he starts untuning his guitar. 

“Oh, I’m sure he deserves it, whatever he did. You don’t have to tell me.” He turns his back to her to lay the instrument carefully in its battered case. 

“Luke,” Rey says, suddenly concerned, “You didn’t just sign me to...you know. Piss him off? Is that what this is?”

Luke laughs. “As if I need to _try_ to piss Ben off. I breathe! I live, despite his prayers! No, no, don’t worry about it, Rey. I intend to make plenty of cold, hard, cash off of you. I’m already sending my tux to be cleaned for the next awards season. You better thank me from the stage first, or this’ll be your only major label album.” He winks at her ostentatiously, and Rey gets the uncomfortable sense that he’s backpedaling. 

“You probably better get ready to drive down the hill,” he says, checking his black rubber watch. “Get your gang together and come talk to me tonight about the tour, okay? I’ve got some stuff for you to look at.” 

And he won’t tell her any more than that, so Rey meets her band with more questions than answers. 

* * *

“I’m going to murder Poe,” Rey says, teeth chattering. She’s been so busy recording, she barely glanced at the boards for the music video, since the production company was recommended by Luke, and the general concept had to be low-budget, which meant arty black-and-white shots of the band performing in a warehouse in West Hollywood. They’re shooting the whole thing in one day, and Rey understood the concept to be straightforward footage of the band playing ‘Motion Sickness’ in their own clothes. 

Rey outsourced final approval to Poe, and had considered that a good and wise act of delegation. 

She hadn’t noticed, and Poe failed to mention, the shots of Rey falling back into a bathtub, holding a prop guitar. Wearing a thin, white tank top over a black bra. 

She supposes it is a metaphor, or some crap like that. Her medium isn’t visual. 

“I can hear you,” he shouts from across the room. 

“I’ll say it to your feckin’ face!” she yells as a makeup assistant fixes her mascara where it ran in the previous shot. 

Rey’s gone into the water three times now, and she doesn’t have the proper expression of “regretful resolution,” according to the merciless director, who projects a level of ‘don’t-fuck-with-me’ that Rey can only aspire to. Rey scrunching her face up in anticipation of the (cold! It is very cold!) water is not the mood Enfys wishes to convey in her (her! Not Rey’s!) music video. 

Enfys has shot music videos since “before MTV,” she tells Rey, and Rey doesn’t ask her where the videos were before MTV, because she’s afraid of her. Enfys is dressed as though she plans to attend a death metal concert immediately following the video shoot. 

Poe lopes over to the makeup stand and critically examines the palettes, as though he is managing this facet of her career as well. 

“I think it’s going to look fantastic,” he says, speaking to her tits, which are ready to cut glass under her wet bra. 

“I’m going to get a picture of you coming out of a cold shower and make it our album cover,” Rey warns him. “Just your shriveled little dick.” 

The makeup artist coughs to cover a laugh. Poe shoots Rey a wounded look. 

“Why would you do that? Your boobs are gonna look great in this video,” he says. 

“She’s not trying to sell her boobs,” Paige scolds him from her seat against the wall. Enfys is shooting Rose on percussion, because she’s the one with “visual interest,” and Finn and Paige are pouting. 

Jannah spent half an hour sawing her bow back and forth for a close-up shot, very slowly, and is now excused for the afternoon. She’s gone to bring back some kind of local vegan cupcake on Rose’s bucket list, and the thought of eating sugar soon is the only thing keeping Rey together before her next plunge. 

When Rey finally looked at the storyboard, her costume, the water, she did raise some objections. Enfys read her the riot act: Skywalker Records is paying for the shoot, which means Rey needs to sell records to pay back Skywalker Records, and Rey is going to sell a lot more records as a fit young woman in a wet shirt than a “sad voice on the radio warbling about her loser boyfriend.” 

Enfys doesn’t seem like a fan, but she had to buy the track for the shoot, so Rey considers it a wash.

“I mean, it can’t hurt?” Poe says, expression pure and innocent. “Isn’t this why people watch these things on YouTube?”

“I only watch cat videos,” the makeup artist confides. 

Rey adjusts her bra beneath the white tank top she’s been costumed with. It doesn’t help the nipple situation at all. 

Enfys has ‘Motion Sickness’ on a constant stop/start loop so that Rose can synchronise the percussion to the track, and it’s making Rey sick to hear her own voice over and over. 

“You’re getting texts!” Paige yells, shaking Rey’s purse. 

The makeup artist pulls away, examining Rey critically. “You’re done,” she says. 

“Do you want me to check that for you?” Poe says, hooking a thumb at her purse. 

Enfys is done with Rose, and stomping back over to the camera hung over the bathtub. 

“Yeah, sure,” Rey says, thinking of Jannah with the cupcakes, distracted by the camera, the makeup, the bathtub, her goosebumps, her life. 

She grabs the prop guitar and steps mincingly into the cold water. Enfys puts her face to the camera and begins to yell directions at one of her lighting assistants. 

Poe and Paige fight over Rey’s mobile out of the corner of her eye, with Paige eventually stiff-arming Poe in the chest for the win and peering into the screen. 

“It’s an unknown number!” Paige yells, and Rey’s knees lock where she stands in knee-deep bathwater. “It says, ‘Please call me before you talk to Luke.’” Then she frowns as she scrolls up, finally letting her mouth fall open in a little ‘o.’ She’s apparently seen this morning’s texts. 

Possibly Rey has neglected to mention to Paige or...anyone else...that Ben’s still trying to get in touch. 

Rey’s not sure what her own face shows, but Enfys likes it, because she claps and tells Rey to fall back into the cold water. 

Rey does. She contemplates not coming up. 

* * *

It’s late by the time they get back to Skywalker Ranch, and Rey is tired and dreading it. A few things are clicking into place, or maybe just converging like objects falling from orbit, and she can’t look at her bandmates as the van pulls into the main drive. 

“Are you gonna call him?” Paige whispers as Rey climbs out. 

“No,” Rey says shortly. She hasn’t done in five years, why would she call now, just because she hasn’t managed to keep a whole ocean between them? 

“But he-”

“I’ll ask Luke about it, don’t you worry,” Rey grits out. 

“Maybe he’s just reaching out because he knows you’re here,” Rose says, jogging to catch up. “He follows you on Twitter.”

Paige elbows her younger sister. “I thought we weren’t mentioning that?”

It’s sweet of her to try, but Rey was unable to escape the legion of screenshots that anonymous volunteers sent her way to confirm that unfortunate fact. Ben follows less than a dozen people on Twitter, and one of them is Rey. A lot of blue checks followed Rey after Luke posted her link on his account, but only one was ever documented snogging her outside a pub, unfortunately for Rey’s mentions. 

It is late enough that most the main house is dark and quiet, but they find Luke watching the Aristocats in one of the living rooms, a half-consumed joint still dangling elegantly from his left hand. He cranes his neck to look over his shoulder at Rey as she comes in. 

“Hey guys,” he says nonchalantly. “Isn’t Enfys the best? Did you give her my love?”

“Yeah, sure,” Rey says, impatient, waiting for the rest of the band to back her up. “Did you want to talk about the tour options?” 

Luke offers the joint to her, and she waves him off. She wants to be sober for this. 

He looks faintly regretful as he takes another toke and then stubs it out in a crystal ashtray on the coffee table in front of him. He blinks a few times to gather his faculties, then fumbles a yellow pad out of a battered briefcase at his feet. He’s got notes in several different colors of ink, as well as a doodle of an airplane. He clears his throat and checks that the band is listening to him. 

“So, I’m sure you know, that a new act like yours, one that’s trending, would usually tour domestically, hit the big room clubs on off nights, or if you’re lucky, be the 8:00 p.m. opener for a bigger act on a good night. 9:30 Club, the Mission Ballroom, Trees, that kind of place.” 

Poe nods, like he knows. 

“And you can do that, if you’d like,” Luke adds. “You won’t make any money that way, but you’ll start building your fanbase, make connections, then hope you get better slots next year when you do it again. The label has talked to several booking agents, and we can get it set up very quickly.” 

Rey makes an impatient noise in the back of her throat, resists the urge to throttle a national treasure. 

“Or,” Luke says, “I have an opportunity for you guys. Top tier venues. US, Canada, UK, the Continent. Single opener for an established act. This didn’t come from the _label_.” 

“Who’s the headliner, Luke?” Rey snarls. It’s a trap. This has been a six-week-long wind-up to a cosmic joke at her expense.

“I was surprised,” Luke continues, as though he hasn’t heard her. “But I looked over the contract myself, and it’s fair. Empire Records doesn’t get any cut. Just the promoter. You’d stand to make 10% of door net of expenses, and that’s rich for an opening act.”

“The fucking headliner, Luke,” she snaps. 

He doesn’t even look affronted. 

“The Knights of Ren,” he tells her, and Rey’s the only one who isn’t even a little surprised.   
  


* * *

**_Then_ **

The Azure Arms is sandwiched between a florist and a sweet shop, but maintains some mock Tudor pretensions on the exterior with hanging baskets of flowers and polished brass ornaments. Inside, it is like every other pub, smelling of wood, spilt beer, and the chips from the fryer. The plaid wallpaper is faded and familiar to Rey, as is the crowd. 

Ben looks like a tourist at the zoo when they enter, shaking the rain out of his hair and scanning the crowd of working folk catching up with their mates after a long day on foot or in a driver’s seat. Then he schools his features to something more neutral as Rey’s friends wave at her from a cluster of stools around a corner table.

He puts his hand on her lower back like he’s escorting her across a ballroom, not the sticky, uneven floor of a pub favored for its location and pricing, not atmosphere or cuisine. 

Paige makes big eyes at her as they approach, and Finn’s expression is unwelcoming, but Rey also sees that he has his arm draped around Rose’s shoulders, so he’s got no ground to challenge her own decisions with respect to the opposite sex. Rose unashamedly looks at Ben’s shoes, and then his hair, and shoots a qualified thumbs-up to Rey from underneath the table. 

Rey introduces Ben to them, and them to Ben, but she sees from his expression that he doesn’t plan on memorizing their names. Rey knows half the remainder of the crowd either by name or face, but she’s not going to bother them with Ben. 

He scoots around the table on the dodgy upholstered banquette to put his back against the wall and slumps into his seat without any apparent interest in the minor news Rey and Rose exchange. 

Finn is working up a real sulk; he’s used to being the only masculine energy in the group, and both Paige and Rose are shooting Ben little looks that aren’t flirtatious by any means, but acknowledge that Ben is big, and a man, and older than them, and does have quite nice hair. 

“I’ll get a round,” Finn announces grandly. “What will you have?” 

Rose and Paige are already drinking cider, so it’s not as extravagant as it could be, but Rey tries to give Finn the dignity his offer deserves when she asks for an IPA. 

“Whatever,” says Ben. “I don’t like beer.”

Finn gives him a flat look. “Right. An IPA and a whatever.” 

Ben nods absently, already twisting his body to look at the karaoke system on their table, facing Paige. 

“There’s no piano or anything?” he asks Rey. 

She shakes her head. “Not anywhere I’ve ever been. Haven’t you ever done karaoke before?” 

“Not with a machine,” he says, scooting closer to Paige so that he can flick through the song options in the grimy, laminated songbook. 

Rey checks the time on her mobile. “Starts in five minutes. It’s all regulars, they’ll be happy to hear us.” 

“Us?” Ben asks. 

Finn returns with two IPAs and a pink drink in a martini glass. Rose cackles as he sets it in front of Ben. Rey would have wagered that the Azure Arms did not even possess martini glasses. 

“Here’s your whatever, mate,” Finn says, and that would have been enough to start a fistfight in Rey’s secondary--would be enough at this very pub--but Ben merely accepts the drink with a nod and takes a sip, unperturbed. 

“Fruity,” he notes. He pulls his wallet out of his back pocket. “Do they sell anything here to eat that isn’t fried or covered in gravy?” he asks the table. 

“Pickled eggs?” Rose suggests.

He rolls his eyes and stalks off to the bar. They all watch his broad and retreating back as he goes, with varied expressions. 

When he’s arguably out of earshot, Paige tells her, “Explain yourself, Rey Johnson.”

Rey shrugs helplessly while Rose squeals and kicks her feet under the table. 

“He’s a _customer,_ _”_ Finn warns them, as though there were some kind of binding code of ethics prohibiting fraternization between car mechanics and car operators. 

“He’s not so bad,” Rey defends him. 

“He’s American?” Paige asks, her gentle face creasing in concern. “Where does he live?”

“On holiday!” Finn insists. 

“Oh,” Rose says, looking disappointed. 

“For two months yet,” Rey corrects Finn, frowning at him. 

Paige takes a swig of her drink. “Isn’t that worse, then? Aren’t you going to get attached? What if you fall in love with him?”

“Ah, no, you know me,” Rey blusters. “I’m a tough girl.” 

Rose drinks to that, but it’s Finn who says, “Yeah, we _do_ know you…” 

Whatever else he was going to follow with is cut short as Ben reappears with three baskets of chips for the table. When he sets them around the table and gruffly promises to get the next round, something in Rey’s chest clenches a bit. His look over at her is almost shy, and she has the thought that Ben Solo perhaps was not properly socialized to be among people as a kitten. 

The crowd of regulars begin to queue to enter their karaoke selections into the machine on the wall and Rose and Paige bicker about their choice. Finn confidently selects ‘Should I Stay or Should I Go.’ Rey smirks at Ben, who looks a little shell-shocked by the first lad belting out a Madonna tune to kick off the evening. 

“What?” he asks. 

“What are you going to sing?” Rey asks innocently. “I was thinking Bob Dylan, because everyone sounds good singing Bob Dylan, and you’re going to be a coward about this.”

“Everyone sounds good singing Dylan because Bob Dylan couldn’t sing,” Ben points out mildly. “And I’m not a coward.”

“Oh?” Rey asks, as Paige and Rose settle on ‘Always Be My Baby.’ She internally winces. She hopes Paige, who has a lovely soprano, is taking the lead. She’s not sure what Rose’s vocal range is because the sweet girl is completely tone deaf. 

“How about a duet,” Ben says easily. “Your choice.” 

“Hmmm,” Rey says. “Limiting, but I’m sure I can think of something.”

Ben nonchalantly sips his pink drink, no doubt anticipating, “Walk This Way,” or possibly “Stop Draggin’ My Heart Around” for this bar full of tipsy Brummies. 

Rey smiles as she stands to make her selection then regains her seat to wait. Ben listens attentively as Rey and her mates grade the singers and hum along, even if he doesn’t seek to add much to the conversation. She watches his shoulders open and relax as the evening goes on. Some of the singers are terrible. Some are quite good. There’s no judgment for the awful ones as long as they don’t seem too conceited about it. Rey already knows Ben can sing, but she’s curious to see if he’ll perform. 

And then Rey’s fourth-form maths teacher is done warbling “Don’t Stop Believin’,” and it’s Rey’s turn to pull Ben out of his corner and hold the microphone as her selection reaches the top of the queue. 

He doesn’t look nervous, which he really _should._ This is Rey’s local; if she demanded help to cook and _eat_ him, most of the crowd would likely assist her. If he’s got any apprehension about performing, it’s not in evidence, though. 

When the title flashes, he doesn’t complain, doesn’t argue, doesn’t do more than arch an eyebrow at her, the way a chess grandmaster might suggest, _ah, the English defense, how droll._ Rey chokes on her last sip of beer with the insanity of it. Rey offers the microphone with ceremony, half-thinking Ben will demand something else. 

“Empire State of Mind?” Rose laughs as Ben shakes out his hands and stretches his neck. “Can your boy do a New York accent?”

Ben’s not pressed; before the opening drum beat is even done, he seizes the microphone so that he can fall in flawlessly with, “Yeah, yeah, I'm up at Brooklyn, now I'm down in Tribeca…”

It turns out Ben Solo makes a decent rapper. 

Rey would have bet money Ben’s never listened to a song without a guitar solo, but he throws his full power into the lyrics, tapping his hands to the beat around the base of the microphone. 

The crowd rumbles appreciatively as Ben hits every single phrase, barely seeming to read the lyrics. Rey is suppressing a laugh so hard that she feels tears welling up while Ben does a flawless impression of Jay-Z, and Paige’s muffled giggles nearly make Rey miss her cue to come in for the chorus. 

She has to lurch close to him to sing the melody, and he shoots her a private look from inches away when she begins to sing about the concrete jungle an ocean away. It’s knowing. Personal. A heavy-lidded _isn’t this fun_ grin with closed lips and flickering dimples. And Rey’s stomach bobs because yes, yes it is. It is very fun to have Ben crowded up against her, the words tumbling from his lips, and the eyes of room on them as they wait for him to stumble on a word or Rey to drop a note as the song spins faster and faster. 

Ben has a light in him that he can turn on and off, and here, with the music playing, it’s illuminating the entire room, pulling the attention of the patrons and Rey’s friends into his orbit. He could be singing anything, she thinks. The Happy Birthday song. Everyone would still look at him. It’s not just that he’s fit and dressed posher than the local crowd; it’s something about how he holds his head, how his hands wrap around the microphone. The way he seems aware of the people watching him and unaffected by them at the same time. And his voice, too: velvety and thick, whether he’s rapping about New York or rendering Paul McCartney’s greatest. 

He nods approvingly at Rey as she finishes the chorus, and her stomach drops again. Ah shit, she thinks. Maybe she is going to fall in love with him. 

* * *

Several hours later, Ben is tucked into the arms of a group of lorry drivers seeking assistance with ‘Born to Run.’ His cheeks have color from the drinks the crowd have been pouring him, and his expression is hectic with the energy of friendly strangers. Rey’s company vouches for him, and his voice gets him entree to each group seeking a solid male backup vocalist. 

Paige is smiling at Rose, falling asleep against Finn’s shoulder, and Rey can’t take her eyes off of Ben. Rey’s usually the star of the show here--she can hit the high notes on the 80’s love ballads and growl the 90’s grunge hits better than anyone else in the pub, Paige included--but she relinquishes the free drinks and the applause to Ben as he soaks up the approval of this tiny corner of Birmingham. 

“He’s not so bad,” Finn says softly, following her gaze. 

Rey has to rub it in. “Just because he didn’t sing any of the bad words in ‘Empire State?’”

“That just means I don’t have to thrash him in the loo,” Finn scoffs. He finishes his pint. “I think I’m going to be petting your hair with a broom in two months, but he’s not so bad.” 

“Speaking of,” Rey says, giving Rose’s drowsy head a meaningful look. 

“What?” Finn pretends to innocence. 

“We’re all friends. And adults. Friendly adults,” Finn explains, before Ben slouches back over. He’s not sloppy drunk, but his eyes are bright. 

“Another duet?” Ben asks.

“No time before last call,” Rey sighs. “We can come back next week.”

“Yes,” he agrees, surveying the room. “Next Tuesday.” 

She has to drag him out of a crowd of new admirers who want to pat his shoulder and express their admiration, and she can tell he’s torn between wanting to roll his eyes and eating it up with a spoon. It’s thirty minutes until closing time, but she has to drive her American back to Tanworth-in-Arden still and rest for work. 

“So you liked it, then?” Rey asks as he opens the door to the cold, humid night air. It’s spitting rain, but the high street is well-lit, and Rey’s not worried about the walk to her car with Ben. 

As they step to the pavement, though, Ben catches her arm and spins her up against the wall. His big, warm body crowds hers as he catches her chin with calloused fingers and weaves his other hand into the hair behind her neck. She’s expecting it, but when his smiling lips press against hers, she still opens her mouth on a gasp. He’s been drinking sweet cocktails all night, and he tastes like sugar when he breathes against her. Rey wants to drink all of it down, everything he has to offer. His hot mouth moving against hers, his body scraping her against the plaster of the wall, the reckless joy he’s vibrating with. She wants every single bit of it before he’s gone forever.

“I like the way your voice sounds up against mine,” he murmurs into her lips, and kisses her again. 


	6. Make Out In My Car

**_Now_ **

Rey doesn’t feel proud of storming out of Luke’s living room, exactly, but she’s not too embarrassed about it, either. If she threw a proper, Kylo-Ren-sized tantrum, she’d still be entitled to it. To yell and break things and make people worry. She doesn’t even do that. She stomps up to her bedroom and closes the door with more than the ordinary amount of force, but she doesn’t wake the whole building. She picks up a pillow covered in patchwork embroidery and puts it over her face to scream. There’s a tag on it--Pier 1. She might have assumed Leia carried it home from Bali or something. Rey tosses it as hard as she can against the wall, but it doesn’t make much noise as it bounces off and thuds to the carpet. 

Rey follows it, sinking down on the floor and curling into a ball. Her pulse pounds and shudders, and Rey knows she can’t stay there, but she has no idea what her next move is. She thought she was so clever, putting her life back together. Building something important and new. Something of her own. 

And all she’s been doing is all she never wanted to do, which was chase along after Ben Solo. 

There’s a soft knock on the door, and Rey tries to imagine who is behind it. Surely not Luke. He seems like the kind of man who puts entire miles between himself and women experiencing strong emotions. Rose? Paige? Sweet Rose will bring cuddles and sympathy, and Rey would rather bite something. It won’t be Jannah--Jannah’s response to emotional nonsense is to ignore it until the situation corrects itself. 

Rey assumes it’s Rose, but when she grunts an affirmative, it’s Finn sliding in and closing the door behind him. 

He doesn’t look much like a rock star in his faded Arsenal hoodie and trackie bottoms, but Luke’s had no criticism of his abilities in the weeks he’s been here. In the 15 years she’s known him, Rey never heard him voice any ambitions of working as a musician, despite all those first place ribbons, but he’s taken to it with quiet competence and no complaints. Because Rey asked him to. 

She feels like a shit. Like a rubbish person. She’s dragged all her friends halfway across the world, and now she’s sulking on the floor like a spoiled brat. 

“You doing okay down there?” he asks. 

Rey brushes some carpet fuzz of her shoulder and rolls to a sitting position. 

“Oh, sure,” she says. 

He gingerly lowers himself to the ground and takes a cross-legged seat facing her. 

“Did you draw the short straw?” Rey asks. 

“I volunteered.” Finn’s expression is calmly unsympathetic, and Rey hunches her shoulders against it. “You know, we’re all on your team. If you want to tell Luke to fuck off, we’re ready to go on the coffee shop and dive bar tour of America, 2020.”

“Yeah?” Rey asks, imagining it. It’s what they’ve been doing for the past two years. Pooling their change for petrol station crisps and playing for beer money. 

“Sure,” Finn says. “There wouldn’t even be a band, if not for you. You say the word, we pull the cable and eject.”

Rey grunts. 

“But, you know, I don’t think you’re rolling around on the floor because you _want_ to tell him to fuck off.” 

Rey rubs her hand over her chin and glares at Finn, who presses ahead.

“I think you _want_ to go on this tour, and play Madison Square Garden and Red Rocks and all the rest. I think you _want_ to play for tens of thousands of people, and hear your songs on the radio, and be a big fucking star.” His gaze is pitiless. “I think you _want_ to see Ben again. And that scares the shit out of you.” 

“I do not!” Rey objects. 

“Yeah, you’re here with his family, playing his guitar, singing sad songs, because you’re totally over him? I don’t get it. I mean, you don’t have to tell me.”

Rey grabs the pillow back, and bends over to hide her face in it again. 

“So, Luke says that the promotion company put this tour package together just to capitalize on the crossover between your audiences. Algorithms, or something. That he hasn’t talked to Ben,” Finn continues.

“And you believe him?” Rey mumbles into the scratchy fabric. 

“I don’t know enough about it to decide one way or another. I worked in a fucking newsagent in Birmingham. But even if he’s taking the piss, and Ben orchestrated this whole thing? That he got you this rich deal to open for his band? Why are you so opposed to letting Ben balance the ledger a bit? He owes you!” 

Rey stares into the stitching of the pillow, picking at a loose thread. She and Finn have never spoken about it. It’s a good English tradition, not talking about things. 

“Because I think he feels...guilty. Or something. And he _should_. I don’t want him to think that-” 

Rey realizes that she sounds ridiculous, saying that she doesn’t want Ben to think that everything is okay now. That it will ever be okay. 

Finn finally snatches the pillow away from her and tosses it away. 

“See? That’s all about him. You want your life to be all about him? How he feels?”

His tone is now all secondary school P.E. teacher, driving recalcitrant pre-teens back onto the field when they’re three goals down in the second half. 

“Nooo,” Rey admits. 

“Think about how you’re going to feel, when you sell so many twenty-quid t-shirts to his fans that we never have to get day jobs again.”

“ _His_ fans,” Rey points out.

“Well, not for long. They’ll be our fans, soon. They’ll never buy another Knights of Ren album again.” 

Rey gathers herself, her dignity, her pride. 

“You really think it will be okay?” she asks him. “You think we can handle it? This tour? You think we’re ready?” 

Finn scoffs. “It’s going to be easy. We’re professionals, they’re professionals. The Knights of Ren have been touring for over 15 years, and these venues handle big acts every night. Poe says the concert industry is a big machine at this point. All you have to do is show up and sing for an hour every few days. You might not even see Ben. You never hear about the Rolling Stones hanging out with their opening band, do you?”

Rey shakes her head. “You really think that’s how it will be?”

Finn puts his hand on her shoulder. “If that’s what you want, Peanut, I’ll tackle him if he so much as looks at you.” 

* * *

Live Nation’s headquarters are in a modern, two-story building in Beverly Hills with irregular glass facades and a potpourri of non-functional architectural flourishes. The employees are dressed in the modern hipster uniform of plastic eyeglasses and well-worn cotton jersey. Their attitude, however, is briskly corporate. 

The contract, as Leia explained prior to their departure from Skywalker Ranch, is a standard one. Five months. Forty concerts, mixed with a few multi-day festivals. Eleven countries. 

For most of it, they’ll be criss-crossing the North American continent. The Knights of Ren travel in two large tour buses. Rey and her band will be following in a large van, pulling their gear in a trailer. The Knights of Ren have generously offered set-up/tear-down assistance, which Rey plans to decline. The Knights of Ren will generally be sleeping on their bus. Rey and company will be in local motels when there’s time, and in shifts in the van, when there isn’t. 

The Live Nation employees wielding the reams of paperwork are not much older than Rey’s band, but oceans apart in life experiences. Rey feels very young and grubby as her eyes bounce off the blocks of impenetrable text. She feels a roll of nausea in her stomach as she signs away the next five months of her life. Poe promises there’s nothing to be negotiated, but how would he know, really? 

Poe makes idle, cheerful conversation with the promoter. Hotels in Amsterdam. Burger joins in St. Louis. It’s all a wave over Rey’s head. She couldn’t sleep the night before; she ended up swimming slow laps in Luke’s salt water pool until the sun came up and the groundskeepers started attending to the Skywalker estate. She feels empty, like she is waiting for events to overtake her and fill her up. 

There’s some kind of stir behind her when she finishes signing her name in six different places on one sheet of paper. Not loud. Not voices, not shouting. Just a change in breathing, in awareness. A shift in attention. She can figure it out by the movement of bodies and feet to face the doorway.

She’s glad Jannah pulled her aside on the way out the door and made her change. Rey planned to wear leggings and a sweatshirt. She hasn’t slept; she’s tired. Jannah forced her into one of Kaydel’s vintage finds: a fitted red dress with little black polka dots on the skirt, plus one of her leather jackets. Jannah even held her down and applied lipstick to Rey’s resisting face. 

“You’re meeting industry professionals today,” Jannah told her unsympathetically. “You need to look like this is important to you. Look like this is your first tour, not your only tour.” 

So Rey could look worse. She could look less prepared, she supposes. 

But if five years haven’t prepared her to see Ben again, then lipstick is very thin additional protection. 

When she turns around to see him in the doorway, she thinks a hundred years wouldn’t have helped. 

He looks a little older and a little thinner. There are new lines around his eyes and his hair is shorter. He’s got some patchy new facial hair that she absolutely despises, and a thick wool jumper she wants to pull on with her fingers. 

She wonders what he thinks of her as they stare at each other across the crowded room. 

“Oh,” says the promoter, sounding absolutely delighted. “Have you guys ever met Kylo Ren? We can finish going over the tour with both groups, if you’re ready.” 

“Hi Rey,” Ben rumbles, his eyes drinking her in, unblinking. “You look...beautiful.”

Rey doesn’t think anyone else is breathing. She isn’t. Rose, at her left, is reaching slowly for Rey’s arm. Finn’s muscles are bunching like he’s about to throw himself between Rey and the door. Why is everyone panicking? This is fine. She is fine.

“Your goatee looks fucking ridiculous,” Rey finally says. “And my manager can fill me in on the details. I’m going.” 

* * *

**_Then_ **

Not even Grace Ellen’s soft, knowing looks can keep Rey from singing most of the day. It’s the kind of day where the breeze carries away the smell of exhaust and every lug nut surrenders its grip with gentle acquiescence. Ben doesn’t appear after lunch, but he calls two hours before closing with a great deal of feigned concern for the Citroen. 

Grace Ellen comes out of the office with the receiver extended, smiling at Rey. 

“Hey, it’s Ben,” his voice echoes easily from the speaker. “And I-”

“Hmm, who is it again?” Rey asks, teasing. 

“Ben,” he says, in amused affront. 

“Come again?”

“Ben. Tall guy. American. Good kisser?” 

Rey sighs, lips trembling from holding back a laugh. “Not ringing a bell. Could you describe the car instead?”

“I wish I could, but it’s fading from my memory, it’s been so long.”

“Tomorrow,” she promises, looking at the pile where she has stashed the day’s post. She sees the logo of the parts company on a box likely holding the spring the Citroen needs. 

“Hmpph,” he grunts in acknowledgement. “So you’re coming over to hang out tonight, right?” She hears the jangle of un-amplified electric guitar strings in the background as he adjusts the receiver of his phone on his ear. She wonders where he is. Sprawled on his sofa? Perhaps lying on his bed? She hasn’t seen his bedroom yet. 

“Hang out?” she asks, her voice arch. She imagines little air quotes hanging between them. 

There’s a brief pause before Rey hears the squeal of Ben adjusting the capo on the strings. Ben plays the tinkling melody of Sufjan Stevens’ cover of Moses Sumnay, followed in a solicitous falsetto:

_I’m not tryin’ to_

_Go to bed with you_

**_I just wanna make out in my car_ **

_Although I’m dying to_

_Fall in love with you_

**_I just wanna make out in my car_ **

“Touche,” Rey laughs. “I’ll be there after work.” 

* * *

Rey drives past Ben as she pulls up in front of his cottage in the butter-yellow late-summer sunshine. He’s jogging, which is a thing she would have assumed he does, but has not yet observed. He’s got his hair pulled back in a ponytail and a music player strapped to his bare upper arm, but he’s otherwise stripped to the waist and sweating. It’s not a bad look for him, she thinks, as she unashamedly ogles him. 

“You timed that,” she accuses him as he staggers the last few steps to the door of the cottage. “You were probably waiting down the street to be sure you got a chance to show off.” Ben unlocks the door and turns around, giving himself and his quivering musculature a once-over. 

Rey knew he had nice arms, of course, musicians always do, but she hadn’t realized there were so many bulges in and around his chest concealed beneath his usual uniform of black cotton jersey. 

Ben runs a finger between his two dinner-plate sized pectoral muscles and brings it away dripping with sweat. Tries to wipe it on her arm as she squeals and cringles away. 

“Obviously I wanted to look my very best,” he says, chasing her down against the front wall and feinting as though he is going to rub his wet hair against her face. 

They’re both pink-cheeked and grinning when he lets her go and pads away to the shower. 

* * *

Rey sets Ben’s guitar down in the living room and investigates the kitchen. Ben has a pile of chopped fruit and veg on the counter, and a blender full of anonymous beige powder prepped--presumably his post-workout smoothie. Rey gives it a wide, skeptical berth. She investigates the cupboards, but they’re full of ingredients and healthy shit--not a packet of crisps to be found. So she steals a few strawberries off the cutting board and helps herself to one of his Evians before going back to his living room to wait. When she takes a seat on the sofa, she sees his mobile buzzing on silent where Ben has left it on the coffee table. It’s shameless, but she picks it up to see the caller: ‘Mom.’

It gives her a queer feeling to see that; of course Ben has a life and a family and who knows what else living somewhere in the States. He’s just never mentioned any of it, and she’s gotten accustomed so quickly to thinking of him as her American, just hers. 

So she drops his mobile back where she found it, and busies herself tuning Ben’s guitar against his piano. Ben himself returns shortly thereafter, clad in black drawstring pajamas and a matching t-shirt. 

“Have you been practicing?” he asks peremptorily as he slides in next to her on the sofa. 

Rey wiggles her fingers in front of his face to show that she has no peeling callouses to reflect a lack of diligence. 

“Show me your chords,” he demands. 

If Ben had any romantic delusions of how the evening would progress to match Rey’s, they’re apparently lower on his list of priorities than monitoring her progress with the guitar.

“I did practice!” Rey protests. “Did _you_ write anything?” She nods at the area around the piano, which is littered with crumpled balls of paper. 

Ben scrubs a hand back through his hair. 

“Sure I did,” he says. “I wrote all morning. It was great.”

Rey raises her eyebrows at him in doubt. “And you binned it all, did you?”

“It was total garbage, but at least I felt like writing,” he says. Rey leans over to grab a wad of staff paper off the ground, but Ben kicks it out of her reach. 

“Let’s play something,” he begs. “Don’t go through the trash. The Beatles wrote fifty songs a day, and most of them never saw the light of day.” 

“Are you sure?” Rey asks. “I feel like I’m not holding up my end of the bargain here.” 

He shakes his head in stubborn negation. “I _like_ the guitar again, when I hear you play,” he argues. “I like _music_ when I hear you sing. Have you been singing while you practice?” 

Rey smiles ruefully. “It’s like patting my head and rubbing my belly.” 

“That’s why you have to practice it from the beginning,” he tells her in his stern, teacher voice. “Do you know ‘Girl from the North Country?’”

“Well, not the guitar parts, obviously,” she says. “I’ve heard the duet.” 

“Three chords,” Ben tells her. “G, B minor, C, G. Show me.” 

Rey obediently shows him, though her forefinger struggles to compress the full breadth of the strings on the B minor chord, and Ben has to adjust her fingers on the strings. She handles the progression a few times, and he nods. 

He stands and fetches the electric guitar she’d heard over the phone--a black Stratocaster with rosewood fingerboard. He plugs it into a pocket amp and checks the tuning. 

“You have to get used to playing with all sorts of distractions going on,” he tells her. “The other musicians and instruments--your own singing--the crowd--some asshole chucking a water bottle at your head…” 

“Does that happen to you a lot?” 

“Only when I’m playing really, really well,” he tells her. He doesn’t sit down again, but looms over her, holding the guitar. “You start. We’ll both sing.” 

“Wait,” Rey tells him. “Which part am I singing? Am I Bob Dylan or Johnny Cash?”

Ben makes an impatient noise as he gestures down at himself, his all-black attire. “Obviously I am Johnny Cash. I am _always_ Johnny Cash.” 

Rey bites back a laugh and strums the G chord a few times to ground herself. She doesn’t think she’s heard the song in years, but it comes back to her easily. 

Ben lets her strum through the chord progression once before he comes in with the melody. On the next pass, she begins to sing, mimicking Bob Dylan’s rasp. 

_If you're travelin' in the north country fair_

_Where the winds hit heavy on the borderline_

_Remember me to one who lives there_

_She once was a true love of mine_

She misses a note or two, especially on the B minor, but she keeps up the rhythm. Ben easily picks up the next verse, doing his best Johnny Cash growl:

_If you go when the snowflakes storm_

_When the rivers freeze and summer ends_

_Please see if she's wearing a coat so warm_

_To keep her from the howlin' winds_

On the next verse, when she begins to sing, his voice joins her, just as the sounds of his guitar move around hers, taking the halting chords and embroidering them until they sound beautiful and purposeful. The song sounds better where they’re not completely in time with each other; it’s more interesting where it’s not totally perfect. 

The next several verses are a duet, until they come to the climax of the song, and Rey has to shout,

_True love of mine!_

_True love of mine!_ He shouts right after her. 

_True love of mine!_ She sings, letting the last note linger as Ben finishes the song with a flourish of strings. 

They both watch the strings as the last vibrations fade away. 

* * *

She’s the one who has to beg for a break after the next several rounds of Dylan. The sun’s going down, and her stomach is growling. When Ben gets up to refresh his smoothie, she remembers his mobile buzzing. 

“I forgot,” Rey tells him, “you missed a call from your mum while you were showering.” 

His eyebrows jump. “You talked to my mom? What did she say?” he demands. 

“I didn’t answer,” Rey tells him, and his face relaxes. 

“Thanks,” he says, grabbing his mobile from the table. “Do you mind?” 

“No, but I’m getting hungry,” Rey tells him. “I should probably head out soon.’

Ben pauses. “I was going to cook,” he says. 

That startles her. It’s not quite an invitation, but she assumes that’s the gist of it. 

“Yeah, alright,” she says, trying to act casual. What if it’s something terrible, full of quinoa and the other food for food animals he seems to live on? She supposes she can choke it down. 

She gives him a thumbs up, and he gives her a tight smile as he retreats to the kitchen. 

Rey stays put, so it’s not like anyone could accuse her of eavesdropping as Ben makes his call, but she can hear both his voice and the clatter of pans as he starts to cook.

Their preliminaries are brief, so she assumes he’s in regular contact with his mum. His voice is tense, though. It’s not a register she’s heard him speak in before. 

“Yeah, it’s going great.” 

Rey hears the sink turn on. 

“Did you get a chance to talk to Lucian? Rob?” 

She hears the clatter of a pot against the stovetop. 

“But you’re still going to, right?”

Ben clomps around the kitchen, opening the fridge and closing it. 

“No. Absolutely not. It is _never_ going to happen.”

Rey hears a cupboard slam. 

“You can fuck _right_ off with that idea. I don’t give a shit about your fiduciary duty, and I don’t think you do either. This is...” His tone is ugly. A few seconds pass. He opens the fridge again. 

“Then why did you ever say you would?” Ben’s voice drops, turning angrier. This time, when he slams the door to the fridge, Rey jumps, because she hears something fall and break. Rey gets to her feet, uncertain of what to do. 

Ben curses softly, and she decides to check on him. She tiptoes to the doorway and peers in. 

There’s a bottle of soy sauce in pieces on the floor and Ben crouched over it, his face red, and the mobile still held to his ear. 

He waves her away, but he’s barefoot, and there’s broken glass. Rey opens the pantry and finds a dustpan and broom. She motions Ben away from the glass with the broom, and he reluctantly steps away, still listening to his mother. 

Rey can make out the tone of her voice on the mobile, which is urgent and explanatory, but not the words. 

“Look, I’ve got to go,” Ben says, cutting off the words in his ear. “I’m on a date.” He pauses. “Yes, a date. I date, mom.” He sighs at something she says, and hangs up the call without farewells. 

There’s pasta boiling in the pot on the stove, and Rey can smell garlic beginning to burn on the pan next to it. 

“Shit,” Ben says, lunging for it and shaking the pan. 

Rey ducks under his arm, still trying to separate the glass from the soy sauce with the broom. 

She’s unsettled by the call, and she can tell Ben is even moreso. 

“I’m sorry,” he says quietly after she’s got most of the glass corralled and he has the garlic under control. 

“Parents,” Rey says sympathetically, as though she knows much about it. 

He gives a whistling sigh through his teeth. “Yeah.” 

Rey bins the broken glass and finds rags under the sink to clean up the rest of the soy sauce. 

“I finally finished paying back my label for my first advance,” Ben says after a few quiet minutes of stirring with his back to her. 

Rey makes an encouraging noise. “What does that mean?”

“It means I could sign with someone new,” he tells her. “Of course, I need some new music, if I’m going to do that. And right now I have absolutely nothing. But I’ve got a portfolio. They know what I can do.” His voice is reluctant as he explains, and Rey gets the feeling that it’s difficult for him to talk about it. 

“What was that about, then?” she asks, hesitantly. 

“My mom knows a lot of people in the industry,” he says. “And I asked her if she’d make some calls. And she _said_ she would. But now she says I should just sign with my uncle’s label.” 

“Your uncle owns a record label?” Rey asks, surprised. 

Ben nods tightly, sweeping a pile of diced bacon into the garlic pan, where it begins to pop and sizzle. 

“Anyone I’ve ever heard of on it?” Rey asks. 

“Not _me_ _,_ ” Ben growls. 

“Ah,” Rey says, though she doesn’t really understand. 

“I never ask her for anything,” Ben growls. “And I ask her to do one thing for me, and she thinks it’s a chance to get everything _she_ wants.” 

Rey thinks about that, piecing his words together with what she overheard. 

“Lots of people work with their families,” Rey says, worried she’s overstepping. 

“Maybe people whose families aren’t as fucked up as mine,” Ben says. Then he shakes his head, as though to end the thread of conversation. “Can you grab the eggs from the fridge?” 

Ben drains the pasta as Rey beats two eggs and shaves Parmesan under his instruction. 

“By the way,” she tells him, to change his mood. “This isn’t a date.” She keeps her expression sly and teasing. 

“It’s not?” Ben asks, pretending to be shocked. “It’s been so long, I might need a refresher. What did I do wrong? I provided entertainment. Now I’m feeding you. Isn’t that a date?” 

Rey hands Ben the eggs, and he expertly whisks them into the hot pasta to create the carbonara sauce. 

“Well, you didn’t _ask_ me,” Rey says. “I was lured over here for guitar practice.” 

She sneaks a look at him out of the corner of her eye and finds that he’s smiling again. 

“So does that mean last night was a date, then? Because you asked me to go to your terrible pub and sing terrible music?” 

His dimples cut deep grooves at the corners of his mouth. 

“You had the time of your life, and you know it,” she says fondly. “But no, that wasn’t a date either. It _could_ have been, but we failed to agree in advance. So.” 

“Obviously I’m out of practice,” Ben says, moving the pasta to plates and retrieving a bagged salad from the fridge. “How do I ask you on a date, then?”

He efficiently shakes the salad into bowls and adds dressing from a bottle. She gets the sense that he is feeling very proud of himself when he sets the table for her. 

“Hmm,” Rey ponders, taking a first bite of the pasta. The sauce is smooth and silky, rich with the taste of bacon. “I suppose you would think of something fun to do. Something outside of your living room. And then you’ll say, ‘Rey, you are the most beautiful mechanic in all of Birmingham-’”

Ben snorts in agreement. 

“‘-please come with me to see the Derek & the Dominoes 45th Anniversary Reunion Tour-’”

He laughs again. 

“-and since I’m developing something of a weakness for boys with guitars, probably I’ll say yes. Probably.” 

“I’ll keep that in mind,” he says. “Seems like I’d better give Eric Clapton a call, if that’s what you have your heart set on for our first date.” 

“Please do,” she tells him.

* * *

After dinner, he packs up his guitar for her and leads her out to her car. She drags her feet a bit, even though it’s getting late and she has to fix his car the next day. 

He props both his palms against the roof of her car before she can open the door, trapping her between his arms. Rey rests her hands on the inside curves of the biceps, enjoying the resistance of his muscles. 

“You could come with me,” she manages around the tightness in her throat at the way he’s looking down at her in the fading twilight. “Or I could stay.” 

He makes a humming noise in his throat before ducking his head and pressing a chaste kiss to the side of her chin. She takes that as a no. 

“Why not?” she demands. He kisses the other side of her jaw, and his late-day scruff tickles her neck. 

“You are...very young,” he says reluctantly. 

“I’m a day older than I was last night,” she points out. When he’d kissed her like the only oxygen left in the world was in her lungs. 

“I’m thirty,” he tells her, pulling back and giving her a serious look. He pauses, as though expecting her to object. 

“Hmm,” she says, schooling her face into pity. “I think I can be gentle with you, due to your great old age. I won’t break your hip.”

He laughs. “No? Promise? What about my heart?”

“No promises,” Rey mutters and grabs the front of his shirt to drag him closer. 

He gives in and kisses her properly, his tongue hot in her mouth and his breath sweeping against her face. Ben brings his arms around her shoulders and uses them to cushion her as his hips press her into the car. His nose brushes her cheek as she rolls her body experimentally against his. He tugs on her hair in response, and her pulse answers. It’s like honey dripping through her veins, the sweetness of kissing him. 

Ben’s the one to break it off, even though his eyes are shining on hers from mere inches away. 

“Let me take you out first,” he breathes. “I’m going to be good to you, sweetheart. I will.”

Rey nips his full lower lip. “Okay,” she agrees. “Do I have to be good too?”

Ben grins down at her. “Oh, baby, I hope you aren’t.” 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you, dear readers, for joining me in a 15-chapter fic tagged "slow burn!" You are heroes, all! 
> 
> Minor notes:
> 
> Lucian and Rob are Lucian Grainge and Rob Stringer, the CEOs of Universal Musical Group and Sony Music Group, respectively. Leia probably plays bridge with both of them.


	7. Night Shift

**_Now_ **

Once they finish the album and turn it over to the editors, they have to move out of Skywalker Ranch and into a motel where the rooms open directly into the car park and the soap is dispensed from a tube in the shower. It’s not so bad--it’s reasonably clean, and Rey spends her days lying next to the pool and working on her sunburn. There are only two weeks to wait before the tour kicks off at the Wiltern, and Luke has instructed them to relax and rest up. 

They go to the beach, but Rey feels very pale and foreign and brunette, and they don’t stay long. They eat a lot of Vietnamese food, and send pictures of it to Rose and Paige’s family. Finn brings his mobile into the girls’ room when he calls home to his mum, and Rey cries when Grace Ellen says that she misses her at the shop. 

Rey sees Robert De Niro at a coffee shop. She sees a camera crew following a dog walker. She still doesn’t know if she likes the city. 

Luke sends lists of different acts playing around L.A., and they all see a lot of live music. Nobody recognizes her, which is fine. She’s a twenty-something girl in a city full of twenty-something girls, and there’s a kind of numbing anonymity after leaving Skywalker Ranch that Rey can sink into and sleep with. 

Luke does throw Rey an album release party at the Ranch after they go; several hundred people eating vegetarian sushi and touching Rey on the arms while an apple-cheeked teenager in a robot costume mixes the Rolling Stones with Daft Punk at the DJ booth. They spread around the pool, spilling through tents and stages--the young, beautiful, and talented mixing with the older, rich, and powerful. 

It’s not just people from Luke’s label. He’s invited other executives from Universal and Sony, Live Nation, and music press. Rey smiles and dissociates, hoping that the other members of her band are faring better as she answers the same questions again and again.

Yes, it’s a thrill to work with Luke Skywalker. Yes, Leia is the best. No, she doesn’t know what Ben thinks of the album. 

Jannah pulls Rey away from a middle-aged marketing executive with an interest in Rey’s tits and then presses a margarita into her hands. Jannah is wearing a short, tight, chambray dress over gorgeous knee-high gladiator sandals, and she looks like she could be either talent or money. Rey feels scrubby and young in her cheap dress from Oxfam and torn leggings, even though Kaydel approved it. 

“Are you having a good time?” Jannah asks Rey, although she looks away as though she is only waiting out the pleasantries. Strangers move around them, looking at Rey like she’s an animal in the zoo. 

“Sure,” Rey says, taking a slug of the drink, even though she’d planned to stay sober until after their set. She doesn’t understand the point of tequila. 

“Good. Alright, so Paige is having some kind of panic attack, and Ben’s here. Cheers!” Jannah says, clinking her glass against Rey’s and pointing her at both unpleasant surprises. Her face is determinedly cheerful. 

At the edge of the crowd, Rey can see Rose trying to turn Paige away from the path to the car park as Paige swipes at her eyes. In the other direction, Rey sees Ben’s broad-shouldered figure beyond a growing crowd of journalists and industry bloggers. He’s being mobbed but he’s scanning the crowd as though looking for someone. 

“Oh fuck goats,” Rey swears. There’s nothing she can do about Ben in that moment. Anything she would say to him would just cause a scene. Instead, she walks as quickly as she can towards the Tico sisters, trying not to draw additional attention toward herself. She has to dance out of the day of men in expensive woven shirts as they try to block her path and introduce themselves. 

Paige isn’t quite crying when Rey gets to her, but she’s breathing fast, and her face is red. Rose is trying to rub her back, but Paige is stiff and resisting. She’s wearing the same green floral ao dai that Rey remembers from the party they threw to celebrate Rose’s A-level results. She looks miserable. 

“...right in front of Aimee fucking Mann,” Paige is telling Rose. 

Rose gives Rey an unhappy grimace as she approaches.

“What did Aimee Mann do?” Rey demands. She doesn’t mind calling out an indie icon; she’s from Birmingham. 

“Nothing,” Paige says, sniffling. “It was this douchebag from _Spin_.” 

Rey searches her memory, and comes up with a skinny little weasel who had demanded to know which tracks on _Resistance_ Ben had written and wouldn’t take ‘none’ for an answer. 

“He asked Paige what she was doing to bring her instrumentation up to the level of Skywalker’s studio musicians for the tour,” Rose says levelly. 

“I’ve been playing the guitar since I was thirteen,” Paige grits out. “I’m not _getting_ better. I’m just going to keep sucking, if that’s what he thinks.” 

Rey winces, thinking of her conversation with Luke about the guitar solo. But Paige can get better. Why wouldn’t she? They’re full-time musicians now. This is their life now. 

“Let’s go find him and push him in the pool,” Rey suggests. 

Paige sputters, getting snot on her upper lip. Rose fishes a crumpled tissue out of her little rhinestone purse and hands it up to her sister. 

“I’ll be fine in a minute,” Paige promises, rubbing her face. “Let’s just play the set so we can get out of here before I embarrass myself in front of someone else whose poster I had on my wall as a teenager.” 

Rey gives her a half-hearted smile. “Do we have to? I was hoping Ben would get his signed cd or whatever and go home before I had to sing. Do you want to go offer to buy Aimee Mann a drink? They’re free.” 

“He’s here? I thought Luke showed you the guest list?” Rose gasps, fixating on the last uncomfortable detail of their evening. Luke had done so--though Rey can’t recall really reading it. Surely she would have noticed Ben, or any of those assholes at Empire Records he worked with. Alistair Snoke. Sheev Palpatine. The three worst men in the world, from Rey’s perspective. Their names would have stood out. 

Rey shrugs. “I think Ben used to live here. He probably has the front gate keys or something.” 

They look up the hill at the serene hulk of the Ranch. 

“Well,” Rose says, putting her fierce little hands on her hips. “Let’s change up the set list. Send him a message. Let him eat his heart out.”

* * *

Rey’s face is everywhere she looks. On posters. On banners. On the cover of her album. She’s looking down at her hands on the guitar, and part of her still thinks that Ben will come scold her for it. 

She looks like a prettier version of herself, all red lips and long eyelashes. Rey doesn’t want to admit that how she looks has anything to do with her success, but Leia told her in blunt terms that she needed to get her image into the mind of the public while she was still young and fit if she wanted to still be playing when she was “sixty-five, with tits to her waist.” 

So Rey’s inscrutable, photoshopped face in artistic black and white framing clutters her field of vision. It’s harder to look at than even Ben, who hasn’t approached her but is watching her band set up from the back of the crowd with his arms crossed in front of his chest. She’s annoyed to see that he’s shaved, because it makes him look both younger and more familiar. He’s wearing the same kind of button-down black shirt over black trousers as always. 

Rey does her best to ignore him as she checks the tuning on her Les Paul--the guitar she bought herself, with her own money. Open D tuning for the first song. Ben’s never seen it before. As far as she knows, he’s never even seen her play electric before, though the thought that he might have lurked in the back of some shitty pub in the English industrial heartland to see her play gives her a pulse of both anxiety and amusement. Surely he is here just because she is at his ancestral homestead, about to ride his coattails on tour. He had five years to become interested in her music. In her performance, anyway. This is noblesse oblige. 

“We’re starting with Night Shift,” Rey tells Finn as he moves into position behind his keyboard. Jannah grins broadly at Rey as Finn raises his eyebrows. It’s not their typical opener--it starts quietly, for one, and they need the crowd to be listening to catch the solo guitar at the beginning. And then it ends on a yell; Rey usually needs more in the way of a vocal warm-up before she can manage the howl of the final chorus. 

It’s a short set tonight. She doesn’t need to save her voice. And this crowd is far more obliging than their typical audience of intoxicated Englishmen. Rey sees Leia sidle up next to Ben in a cloud-print kaftan and put her hand on her son’s arm. Sees the way he tenses but doesn’t push her away. She supposes that explains Ben’s invitation. It must be nice to have parents who want you to be happy. 

She doesn’t think this song will make him happy, unless he’s just here for the music. 

Rey strums D, D major 7, E with the amplification turned way down. She lifts her face to the microphone. 

“Hi, I’m Rey Johnson,” she tells the crowd when they turn to face the stage. “This is my band. And this is ‘Night Shift.’ It will be going out as our second single soon.”

There’s a small smattering of applause--most of the audience are balancing plastic flutes of sparkling wine and biodegradable paper plates of sushi--but it dies down before Rey sings the first words:

_The first time I tasted somebody else’s spit_

_I had a coughing fit_

_I mistakenly called them by your name_

_I was let down, it wasn’t the same_

_I’m doing fine_

There’s nothing but Rey’s guitar to back her vocals in the first verse, and her diction is clear and unmistakable. Not a few heads swivel to look at Ben before they recall their manners and watch Rey.

Luke is in the front row, looking pleased. There are three verses before Rose picks up the slow beat on the snare and Paige begins to pluck the melody. Jannah comes in to slowly scrape the wail of the cello as Rey sings,

_Don't hold your breath_

_Forget you ever saw me at my best_

_You don't deserve what you don't respect_

_Don't deserve what you say you love and then neglect_

Rose begins to tap the high hat as the song builds a crescendo. Ben shifts on his feet; he’s hearing this for the first time, like everyone else who didn’t get an advance copy to review. Rose hits a fill before the song abruptly slows and Rey whispers the first couplet of the chorus over the barest jangle of the D chord:

_You’ve got a nine to five so I’ll take the night shift_

_And I’ll never see you again if I can help it._

And then Paige hits the fuzz pedal and the volume of the song goes to 10 as Rey repeats the chorus, louder and louder, until her voice is wailing. 

She has to repeat it three times, each time with more conviction:

_And I’ll never see you again if I can help it._

God help her on this tour. 

Paige drops a couple notes of the guitar solo, but stays in key, and the distortion more than makes up for it. Rey sees grown men bopping their heads, and Luke grinning in satisfaction as she rips the last chord off the guitar, chest burning with the exertion of singing over the feedback of the lead guitar and Rose’s enthusiastic beat. 

When Rey looks back into the crowd for Ben, he’s gone.   
  


* * *

**_Then_ **

Ben isn’t even pretending to practice or do anything but watch Rey work. Grace Ellen shut the office door to pay invoices, and they’re alone in the garage. 

“Shouldn’t you be writing the next _White Album_ or something?” Rey pleads from beneath the bonnet of the Citroen. The Maserati engine is far back in the compartment, and she’s nearly dangling, propped on her tiptoes. 

“I’d settle for the next _Wild Life_ _,”_ Ben mutters from over Rey’s shoulder. “But I wanted to be here when it was done.” 

Rey considers “accidentally” dropping a spanner on Ben’s foot, but she is almost done, and it’s rare that she gets the chance to show off for him. When she slides the ignition cylinder back into the engine, she thinks he’s watching her hands and not her arse. Diagnosing the problem was the tricky part, not the actual repair, but she supposes that she looks very competent as she slides the new parts into place and reconnects the belts and wires. 

Rey screws the engine cover back on under his close inspection. It’s not even a functional part, but Ben hums in appreciation. 

“Alright,” she says, wiggling back out. “Moment of truth. Jump in and see if she’ll start.” She turns and grins at him, soaking in his gratified expression. 

“You don’t want to do the honors?” 

“I don’t want to get grease on your interior,” Rey says, pulling the keys from her pocket and tossing them to him. 

Ben pauses as he moves towards the driver’s side door. 

“But you’ll come with me when I take it out, right?” he asks anxiously. She doesn’t think he’s afraid to drive the car. He’s afraid she’ll cut him loose for the rest of the afternoon. 

Rey purses her lips. “Nah, I’ll give you your bill, then we’re through, Mr. Solo.” 

He wrinkles his nose in a way that she allows herself to find adorable before she tells him that she will never, never, pass up the opportunity to ride in his car. 

She backs away from the engine--she wants to see it turn over, but they didn’t hide all the belts and gears back in the late 60s, it’s dangerous--and Ben wedges his big body into the driver’s seat and turns the ignition. 

It turns over immediately, purring like a jungle cat. Rey squeals, and starts stripping off her overalls. Beneath, she’s wearing shorts so tiny they made Grace Ellen blink when she came into work in the morning, and a loose t-shirt washed nearly transparent and torn around the neck. She shuts the bonnet and runs to the passenger side as Ben leans over to push the passenger door open. 

Rey shouts to Grace Ellen that she’ll be out the rest of the afternoon, knowing that she’ll cover for her in the event that Mr. Baccarin actually calls around to find out how his business is faring. 

And then Ben shifts into reverse, and they’re off in a cloud of exhaust and a rumble of the big Maserati engine. 

They don’t discuss where they’re going; she doesn’t think he even cares, beyond getting back to a motorway so that he can open it up. 

Ben maneuvers well enough, even though she can tell he’s not totally comfortable shifting with his left hand, but after a few minutes of winding out of the city centre, they reach the A435 and he can shift up to high gear and then rest his hand on Rey’s bare knee. His palm spans the entire thing, and she feels the tendons flex, like he wants to dig his fingers in. 

It feels like freedom. Sitting in the passenger seat of a fast car, no particular destination. The world is beautiful and hers. 

Ben puts on those Wayfarer sunglasses again, but she can see him sneaking little looks at her her legs when he should have his eyes on the road. 

Rey smiles and cranks the window down, using a free hand to hold her hair back from her face when the wind catches tendrils and whips them against her cheeks. 

The light through the trees flanking the motorway is white and green, and she can smell the sun-warmed earth. 

“Where do you want to go?” Ben asks, the wind pulling his words away. 

Anywhere in the world, she thinks. 

“Have you been to see Nick Drake yet?” she asks instead, and he shakes his head.

“Let’s pack a picnic supper,” she suggests, and he nods in assent. 

She could have found everything she needed at a petrol station, but he pulls off and finds a Tesco, and they buy mini quiches and fizzy lemonade and fruit salad for pudding. It makes her feel a little dizzy, doing the food shopping with this tall man who brushes her lower back with his fingertips and smiles at her when she nicks a strawberry from the display. 

She waits until Ben has bought their dinner, then she buys a bouquet of white spray roses. 

“We can see my parents too,” she tells Ben impulsively when he makes the turn off for Tanworth-in-Arden. 

Ben stills in the instinctive terror of a thirty-year-old man asked to meet the father of the teenager he has perhaps not the strictest good intentions toward, and Rey enjoys his silent squirming for almost five minutes before she tells him that they’re with Nick, buried at St. Mary Magdalene. He says ‘oh’ and tries to look sympathetic and not relieved until Rey starts laughing at him and he pinches her on the outside of her thigh, not hard, in retribution. 

Tanworth-in-Arden is a small village, empty during the day as its inhabitants head north to Birmingham for work, and St. Mary Magdalene is still and majestic on the edge of the small green. 

Nobody else is there, late on a Thursday summer afternoon, and Rey and Ben are alone as they carry their picnic into the overgrown graveyard. Most of the tombstones are old and faded, stone crosses covered with moss and lichen. They’re laid out in no particular order around a grove of oak and beech trees. 

They pay their respects to Nick Drake first--the simple slab inscribed with the lyrics from his final album:

_And now we rise_

_And we are everywhere_

Rey pulls a rosebud out of her bouquet for him and cleans away a little of the rubbish that other tourists have deposited. Ben studies it for a moment, then adds a bit of stone to the top of the tombstone. Rey looks up at him curiously. 

“Jewish,” he says, shrugging his shoulders like he’s embarrassed for it. “Or at least my mother was when I was growing up. I guess you’re Church of England?”

“Not really sure,” Rey says, taking his hand to walk across the graveyard to where her parents are buried. “My parents never talked about it. But I suppose we must be? I think the Catholics keep better track of you, and the Church didn’t know who we were when I wanted to bury my parents here.”

Rey’s parents don’t have a tombstone, just a little metal plate in the ground, but she lays her bouquet on it, pleased to see that someone has already cleared away the last one she left, a few months ago. 

Ben stoops over to read their names, then looks around. It’s a newer section of the graveyard. 

“2012?” he asks. “You were fifteen?”

It doesn’t really require an answer--he can do the math. She waits for the next question. 

“Was it a car crash?” 

The date of death is the same for both of them. It’s a logical conclusion to make.

“Something like that,” Rey says, looking away. There aren’t any happy ways that someone becomes an orphan on a single day. 

“Did you grow up near here?” Ben asks, his voice understanding. He didn’t know what to do about live parents, but he seems comfortable with dead ones. 

“No, we were in a council estate in Birmingham. But I liked...this sounds weird.”

Ben squats down on the ground, then sits on the grass. After a minute, Rey joins him. She sits so that her shoulder brushes his, and they both put their legs out in front of them. 

“I liked the idea of them being buried here. I liked Nick Drake. He was young too, when he died, you know? His family was devastated. I guess that sounds morbid.”

“Well,” says Ben. “That’s death for you.” 

They squint up at the beech tree spreading overhead, turning Rey’s skin to dappled fawn. 

She tells him a little more about her life. Going into care, staying with Finn’s family for a bit, her gran, off and on. He’s soft, when he answers. Like he’s trying very hard to be gentle, but not certain that he knows how. He does. He’s better at it than he thinks. 

When the sun starts to dip they pull out their food and take seats against an ancient mausoleum. 

“Who owns the car, anyway?” Rey asks Ben. He takes a swig of lemonade and passes her the bottle.

“Long story,” he sighs. His mouth pulls to the side. “It was my grandfather’s, originally. He died, my mother inherited it. Then my dad got it in the divorce.” He rolls his eyes. “Then he sold it to my godfather, who stuck it in a car barn and forgot about it.”

“Your grandfather who owned the guitar? He had a guitar and a sports car? Sounds like quite the pussy magnet,” Rey teases him. 

It startles a laugh out of Ben. “Yeah, that’s what the press said. But hey, I have the guitar and the car now, don’t I?”

Rey elbows him in the side. “You look like you’re doing alright, from my perspective.” 

He grins at her, leans over to press a cold, lemon-scented kiss on her mouth. Rey shivers. “From mine too,” he says. 

“And your godfather let you borrow the car?” Rey presses Ben. She wonders why he hasn’t been around to see him. 

“As with most good and terrible ideas, my mother thought of it. I think she hopes he’ll sell it back to her. We’ll see.” 

“Your mum does look out for you sometimes, then,” Rey points out. 

Ben looks unconvinced. “Yeah, this trip was her idea. Come spend some time by myself. Get right. No more hard drugs, anonymous sex, or refined sugar. Write some new material. We’ll see.” 

He takes another swig of the lemonade. Rey tries to school her face to impassivity. 

“So this isn’t your...usual…”

Ben laughs. “If you’re asking about the kale, yeah, I wasn’t eating too many salads on the road. But it feels okay. Last year was...not good.” 

Rey’s cheeks heat a little as she tries to imagine what Ben’s life was like before he met her. She’s not a baby, and she knew he had a life before appearing on her doorstep. She doesn’t really _want_ to know, though. She also wonders at Ben’s mum, sending her son across the pond rather than just telling him to come home. 

“Do you need to get back, then?” Rey asks. “I feel bad. You haven’t written anything yet.” 

“Rey,” Ben says seriously. He tugs on the ends of her hair where it hangs down her back. “You make me want to write a hundred songs. I’ll get to it. I know I will.” 

“Yeah?” Rey says, blushing. 

He presses his nose into the corner of her jaw. 

“I’ve never written a love song,” he mumbles against her skin. “You make me want to.” 

* * *

Ben drives her back to her flat, and Rey’s glad that it looks alright from the street. There are two, three-bedroom flats in the same building, and some of her neighbors are chemists and teachers and respectable people. 

“Look,” he tells her, when he’s parked. He pulls his mobile out of his pocket, and he flicks through his email before showing her the screen. “It’s not Derek and the Dominoes, but will it do?”

He’s trying to be tricky with his thumb over the price, but she sees he’s bought obscenely expensive tickets to see the Who in Hyde Park, a fortnight away. 

“What?” Rey gasps, because 1) the Who, 2) London, 3) the price, for crying out loud. 

“You can go, right?” he asks. 

Rey laughs. “I would _quit_ my job, if I had to. Ben, I was serious about having a drink at the pub!” 

“I’m sure they serve beer,” he says, shoving his mobile back into his trousers and looking pleased with himself. 

Rey laughs, covering her face with her hands. “I can’t believe you’re real. You’re mental, taking me to see the Who for a bloody first date when you know I’m all the way gone for you regardless.” 

“Are you?” he grins, unclipping his seat belt, then reaching for hers. He pulls her up against his chest, with the gearstick between them, and kisses her mouth, her chin, the line of her jaw. Rey weaves her hands into his thick hair and wishes she were touching his skin instead. 

“Ben,” she says, already arguing with him. “I know what I’m about. Come on upstairs.” She yanks on the hair at the base of his skull in emphasis. 

“Don’t press me, I’m shy,” he laughs, dropping his hands to her bare thighs and brushing his thumbs against them. 

“I won’t tell your mum on you,” Rey mumbles, chasing his mouth down, and Ben sighs, thinking. 

“I’ve just been thinking of this story, in my head,” he tells her. “About how I go to England to win back my grandfather’s car and meet this beautiful girl who changes my life. And in this story, I’m the good guy. I become the good guy.” 

Rey reaches for one of Ben’s hands and lifts it up in both of hers. She curls it so that it’s tucked below her chin, his forearm pressed between her breasts. 

“I like this story. And I think you should come up now.” 

But he smiles and tweaks her chin. “Soon, sweetheart,” he says. “But I should probably go park the car someplace…”

He doesn’t want to say that her neighborhood isn’t safe, but it’s probably not, for a car like this. 

“Alright,” Rey says, trying not to act like a brat. “But tomorrow…”

“Tomorrow I’ll pick you up after work,” he says promptly. “And you’ll come practice the guitar. And I’ll have written something for you to play.” He doesn’t make any more promises. 

“Okay,” she says softly. He holds her chin so he can run his tongue against her lower lip, followed by the edge of his teeth. She pulls away first, and gets out of the car. Ben watches her walk to her stairwell. After she climbs up the two stories to her bedsit, she looks out the window in the stairwell, sees him start the car and drive away after a last look at her building. 

Rey puts the kettle on, trying not to feel disappointed. He called her beautiful. He wants to write her songs. He said he’s trying to get his head right, and she ought to support that, if she likes him. And oh, she does. She likes him so much it feels like a little fire has lit in her chest. 

Her flat is too small to feel empty. It barely fits her bed and the little loveseat pointed at her television and her collection of potted ferns. It’s a place for one person, a small person. 

It’s at least twenty minutes later, when her buzzer rings. Rey has already pulled on pajama bottoms and turned the telly to something ridiculous. 

Rey doesn’t worry about going to the door after sundown; somehow she already knows who it will be.

Ben’s car isn’t parked in the street out front, but when she opens the door to the stairwell, there he is, a little red-faced and breathing heavily. 

Rey looks at him, lifts one eyebrow. He seems to be at a loss for words. 

“The engine made a weird sound,” he says. 

“Oh?” Rey asks, when he doesn’t explain further. She didn’t hear anything wrong with the engine all afternoon. 

“I parked the car back at your shop,” he elaborates. “So you can look at it tomorrow.” 

Rey lifts the other eyebrow. “And then you…”

“...ran back over here,” he finishes. 

Rey sucks hard on the inside of her cheeks to keep from laughing. 

“Do you want me to go take a look at it now?” she asks. 

“Well, not if you’re closed.”

“We are.” 

Ben looks at her, her bare feet, her pajamas with the little pink flowers on them. He rubs the side of his face. “Am I being stupid?” he asks, sounding as though he already knows the answer.

Rey lets out the laugh she’s contained. “Yeah,” she agrees. She grabs him by the front of his shirt, pulls him across the threshold. “Yeah, so you’d probably best come in.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Night Shift actually features a bass guitar instead of a cello, but Jannah plays a cello in this fic. Lucy Dacus' guitarist went on Reddit and answered questions about the chords in the song; I want to send him a fruit basket because he sounds like an angel. 
> 
> Aimee Mann is a delight and would never shit-talk a young artist. 
> 
> Spin Magazine no longer publishes in print, but is still an online publication in 2020. 
> 
> The White Album is widely considered the best Beatles album. Wild Life was Paul McCartney's first album with Wings, and generally considered to be terrible. It still sold pretty well. 
> 
> Nick Drake died young and relatively unknown. He eventually died from his severe depression, which prevented him from touring very much, although he did play with the Rolling Stones. He spent his last years in his parents' home in Tanworth-in-Arden making beautiful, sad music. Like Van Gogh, he was much more celebrated after his death.


	8. High and Dry

**_Now_ **

Ben appears like summer rain, without sound or warning, as Rey is unloading their trailer behind the Wiltern early in the afternoon. It’s a green-tiled Art Deco building on the edge of Koreatown, with an architecturally dubious spire rising six stories above the surrounding strip malls. Rey hasn’t been inside yet, but the distance from the parking garage to the facade has her mentally discounting the possibility of eating lunch at one of the barbeque stalls they passed on the long drive through the city traffic. 

It would be a good trial run, Rey thought, when they went over the schedule for this show the night before. They don’t leave for Stanford for another day, so they can test their load in and loud out times with the new van they’ve rented for the North American leg of the tour, and they won’t have to worry about the next morning’s drive. 

It’s a good thing they’re early, because Poe only shipped one dolly over, and they’re all going to need multiple trips to carry gear. 

Rey’s the last one out, checking gear off on a clipboard, when Ben strolls over. She knew, in theory, that he’d be there for soundcheck. He has no reason to come by the garage, though; his band has roadies and sound engineers and cable girls to handle everything. He doesn’t even need to be at the venue yet. He could be...well, Rey has no idea how he spends his days when he’s not performing. Maybe he has a new mechanic in a new garage down in Chino. 

He’s wearing cut-off joggers and a black undershirt. Running shoes. Hair clean and brushed back from his face. If he too spent the last night tossing and turning, unable to sleep, she can’t see it. 

“We’ve got it, thanks,” Rey snaps at him when he strolls up to the van and picks up a pedal board as though he owns it. 

Rey sticks her arms through rolls of cables before picking up her acoustic guitar case. She wobbles a bit under the weight until Ben grabs the end of the case to balance her. 

“You don’t,” Ben says in a neutral tone of voice. “You need to let our roadies help or you’ll be exhausted before you even get to the stage.”

He pulls the guitar case away from her and sets it back on the ground.

“Please,” he says. “They’re already done with our gear.” 

Rey sets her hands on her hips and scans the garage for backup. Everyone else in her band is already gone. She bets Ben waited until Finn, at least, was well away. 

“Don’t you have an animatronic dinosaur or some shit to set up?” she snipes at him. 

“Not since the 2013 tour,” he says levelly. “Just the music, now. We already finished wiring the boards.” 

“I’ve got it,” Rey repeats, stubbornly. She sheds two of the cables and picks the guitar case back up.

She can’t leave until someone else gets back. Poe has the keys. 

She growls, deep in her throat. Ben stands there holding the pedal board, watching her warily. 

“Why are you here?” she demands. 

The corner of his mouth quirks up. “Haven’t you heard? I’m with the headliner.”

“Oh, go fuck yourself,” she says. 

He smiles more broadly. “No time before soundcheck. You know, I could ask you the same thing.” 

Rey sets the guitar case in the van so that she can cross her arms beneath her breasts defensively. And punch him, if necessary. 

“You’re the one who set this tour up, aren’t you? Don’t take the piss out of me about Live Nation or whatever.” 

He doesn’t deny it. 

Ben rolls his eyes instead. “Don’t act like I tricked you into it. All you had to do was say no, if you didn’t want to come.”

“Yeah, sure, that’s a thing people can do, right?” Rey says on a snarl, and she’s gratified that Ben shifts his weight at the venom in her voice. And hopefully with a little guilt. “I’m not going to cut off my nose to spite my face. Doesn’t explain why you did it.”

“Rey,” he says, and her back goes rigid to hear him say her name again. “I just wanted to talk with you again. Will you let me call my fucking roadies so we can do that before the tour starts?” His eyes are open and pleading, and she hates that look on his face so much. 

“What’s there to talk about, Ben?” she asks, suddenly feeling empty and tired. “Are you running out of material again? Stick around for our set.” 

“Yeah, fine, I will,” he says, dark eyebrows lowering. “You got any other songs I haven’t heard yet? You already told the world you were faking it, you hate me, you never want to see me again. Just let me know what else to brace for.” 

She stares at him incredulously. “You’re the last person to be lecturing me about what I sing,” she tells him, her voice getting perilously close to a screech. “It’s all just roles we play to make the audience feel what we want, right? You think it means a fucking thing, what I sing? What you sing? You’re going to tell me that with a straight face?”

“So really you don’t mean a word of it, then?” he barks back. 

Rey opens her mouth to say something else--she’s not even sure what she could say that would be worse than what she played the night before--but she sees a flash of yellow out of the corner of her eye. Poe’s strolling back in, his polyester Brasil jersey so hideous that it sucks up the light in the garage. 

Ben straightens, pulling the board to his chest. 

“Wow, Kylo Ren!” Poe calls, picking up his pace as he approaches them. “I talked to your manager, but I wasn’t sure when we’d meet. Mental! I had your poster in my locker in secondary, you know. My gym locker. The poster with the trees made of drumsticks? Where you’re covered in mud?” 

Ben gives Poe a look that would singe the eyelashes off a more perceptive man, but Poe bats them back at Ben, completely unaware that someone new has wished for his death this day. 

Poe takes the pedal board out of Ben’s resisting arms. “Thanks mate,” he says. “Can’t wait to hang out on this tour.” 

Ben only grits his teeth and blinks at Poe. Rey grabs the cables and guitar. 

“Hey,” Poe says to Ben, as though having a brilliant idea, “could you just hang out for a second? Finn and Jannah are almost back. Just watch the van, yeah?” He looks at Rey. “You ready?”

“Very,” she says, casting Poe a look of gratitude. He winks at her, and she mentally forgives him for ordering only one dolly. 

They walk away, leaving Ben alone, surrounded by amplifiers and wires. 

* * *

Rey lurks in a dressing room until Rose comes to fetch her for soundcheck. She didn’t see Ben again, or any other members of the Knights of Ren, as she ferried their gear to the area behind the stage they’ve been allotted as the opening act. 

“Wow, their manager is a frigging asshole. He told us not to get used to more than twenty minutes for soundcheck,” Rose says, peering in at Rey where she is perched on the makeup counter, watching YouTube videos of hedgehogs on her mobile. “Oh dear, it’s a hedgehog kind of day?”

“Ben wanted to talk,” Rey says petulantly. 

“Hmmph,” Rose sniffs. “Well, we won’t let that happen. I suppose we have to let him sing, since he’s the headliner and all, but talking was not in that contract.” 

Rey giggles, yanking on the ends of her hair. 

“Here, let me fix your buns,” Rose says. “Have you thought about trying a different color?”

“Kaydel liked the classic look,” Rey sighs. She lets Rose fuss over her and talk her into lipstick. The leather jackets are too warm to wear under the indoor lights, but Rey has acquired a pair of engineer’s boots to wear with her little polyester dresses, and they ground her as they make their way to the stage.

The Wiltern seats nearly two thousand, Rey knows, but it feels very intimate when she steps onto the stage. She has to pass Ben’s guitars on stands as she goes; he has one for every tuning, all in color-coded Stratocasters. She squashes the impulse to change a tuning. It’s going to be a long tour if she can’t just ignore him. 

Finn is still plugging in the soundboards, but Jannah is already checking her microphone for vocals. 

Rey steps to the edge of the stage and looks out at the sea of red velvet seats. Imagines them full of Knights of Ren fans. What will they think of her? Is she going to start a riot if she sings ‘Motion Sickness’? 

“You know,” says Rose, stepping up next to her and squinting at the great crystal chandelier hanging over the gallery, “wouldn’t it be great if they came here as Knights of Ren fans, but left here as Rey Johnson fans?” 

Behind her, Rey hears Paige adjust the volume on her amplifier. Rey squints out again at the audience. There’s a figure in black, far in the back, with its legs propped over the back of the seat in front of it. Ben. 

“Well, why wouldn’t they?” Rey asks. “The Knights don’t even have the dinosaur anymore.” 

“No dinosaur?” Finn calls. “We ought to be the headliners.”

“Next time, guys,” Rey vows to them. “We’ll be back here next time, and then we’ll be the headliners.”

Rey looks down at the floor in front of her. A set list for the Knights of Ren has been taped down there; twelve songs in Arial 24-point bold. Rey holds out her hand, and Poe brings a stack of their own printouts. She kneels and tapes her own set list next to Ben’s. 

She grabs her electric guitar and nods at Finn. 

It’s hard to go through the pre-show sound check with Ben’s eyes on her from the back of the theater, but it’s possible that he’ll lurk around every single time, so she decides to get used to it. Her fingers are trembling on the tuning keys though. 

Rose runs off a few fills, then stops. 

“Hey Rey,” she says. She plays a familiar pattern on the snare and toms. “You know this one?”

“Oh shit,” Paige laughs. “Do it. Do it.” 

Rey freezes, smiling. She does know that one. It’s good to hear Paige laugh. They’re running out of time on soundcheck, but she’ll play it if it makes Paige laugh. 

“Only if Finn plays too. Finn, do you have an 80s setting on your board?” 

“Do I ever,” he responds. She hears him hit a few buttons on the keyboard, and then synthesizer vibrato wails through the sound system. 

Rose plays the toms again, and this time Paige chimes in with a raunchy squeal on her electric guitar. 

Rey taps her foot and wiggles her hips to loosen up, and she shoots a look back at Jannah, who shakes her head and laughs, then sets her cello down. She comes up to the lead microphone and tells Rey,

“This song is not politically correct. We better hope nobody is recording.” 

Rey shades her eyes and looks at Ben, motionless in the rear of the theater. 

“We have the goods on Ben Solo, right?” she yells. “He’s not going to tell anyone.” 

Ben lifts a thumbs-up in the back of the room. 

“Okay, okay, it’s a good sound check, right? If we can make this sound professional, we’re good.”

“What’s that?” Poe yells from off stage, but they all ignore him. Rose hits the beat on the high hat and then the intro rhythm. 

Paige plays the opening lick again, and this time Rey comes in with the vocals. 

_Now look at them yo-yo's, that's the way you do it_

_You play the gee-tar on the MTV_

_That ain't workin, that's the way you do it_

_Money for nothin, and chicks for free_

Rey hears Rose’s laugh like rusty bells as Jannah comes in on the next verse, mimicking Mark Knopfler’s smoky baritone and nearly cracking Rey up too. 

_Now that ain't workin', that's the way you do it_

_Lemme tell ya, them guys ain't dumb_

_Maybe get a blister on your little finger_

_Maybe get a blister on your thumb_

Rey holds her hand out and wiggles it in the air. Can’t check that she’s practicing now, Ben. 

Even Finn sings along for the chorus:

_We got to install microwave ovens_

_Custom kitchen deliveries_

_We got to move these refrigerators_

_We got to move these color TVs_

They laugh too much to sing much more than, “money for nothing, chicks for free,” for the rest of the song, but the microphones all work, Rey’s pretty sure, and she doesn’t even care that Ben applauds when they’re done. 

They sound good. They all know their instruments. The audience will hear them, if nothing else. Anyone who shows up in time to catch the opening act is assuming the risk that the opening act will be terrible--and Rey isn’t terrible. She just has some very uncomfortable things to sing that some people have assumed are about Kylo Ren. 

“Time to set the house on fire,” Jannah tells her, as the door in the rear of the theater opens and the crowd begins to pour in. 

* * *

**_Then_ **

Ben’s too big for her room. His head doesn’t scrape the ceiling, his shoulders don’t bump the furniture--but she can’t see anything but him as he backs her towards her bed. Ben’s palms run confidently over her hips, squeezing lightly and pulling her up against him. She goes on tiptoes to kiss him, clinging to him by the front of his shirt. 

Ben knows the steps of this dance better than she does, and he pulls his tongue out of her mouth long enough to ask her to turn off the telly, still turned to Big Brother. She blushes when she complies, even though Ben isn’t judging her. He’s looking around her place with a little frown, as though wondering where the rest of it went. 

She hasn’t had a man up here before. There’s only room for one, really, except on the bed. 

Well, that’s where they’re headed, she’s fairly sure. 

“Do you want to put on some music?” She asks, wondering if that’s a normal thing to say. 

Maybe it’s not for other people, but Ben Solo smiles broadly and asks where her stereo is. 

She doesn’t have a stereo, she has a clock radio with a decent speaker, but when she holds out a hand for his mobile, and he chooses some music on it before he turns it over to her. She plugs it in, and Thom Yorke’s voice begins to croon the first song on _The Bends_. 

She relaxes, not even aware she was testing his intentions, but glad he’s passed. This is fine. A fine soundtrack for her and Ben. 

Ben reaches for her again and cups her face with his big hands, thumbs stroking over her cheekbones. She feels her blood turn to honey as he kisses her, warm and sweet and thick. 

“What do you want, sweetheart?” he murmurs, his breath brushing over her lips. “I need you to tell me.”

Rey knows she wants to touch Ben, she wants to feel his weight on top of her, she wants to chase this sweetness dripping through her veins--but she doesn’t have the words. She doesn’t know how to say soft things. Pretty things. 

“I want you-” she hesitates, and Ben smirks in masculine pride, “-to tell me what I should do.” Her breath quickens as she waits to see how he’ll respond. If he’ll think she’s cheating. That she doesn’t know her own mind. 

He pulls back a little and studies her face. His hands still frame her, and he slides a thumb across her lower lip. She obediently opens her mouth and runs the tip of her tongue along the rough edge of a callus. She tastes the salt on his skin. 

Ben’s pupils contract and expand, his eyes darkening. 

“Get on the bed, then,” he says, his voice not so smooth now. 

His eyes flick up and down her figure as she steps back and back until her calves hit the bedframe. 

His hands go to the collar of his shirt, and he slowly starts on the buttons. 

Rey scoots back until she’s lying against her pillows. She can’t take her eyes off him as he undoes the buttons, one by one. 

She doesn’t think he’s being precious about it. He’s just taking his time. Letting her see him as he reveals a slice of his bare throat, and then his chest. Her breath comes faster as he peels it away from his chest, carved white and flecked with beauty marks. 

He folds his shirt carefully on her little sofa, then starts on his trousers. Maybe he is making a little bit of a show, she thinks, because his lips curve and he makes sure to catch her eye as he unzips and steps out of his trousers. 

“You’re falling behind,” he says, retrieving his wallet from his trouser pocket and setting it on top of his pile of clothing. 

“Right,” Rey says breathlessly, eying his powerful thighs, the way his cock is pressing against the confinement of his short black boxers. She supposes her clothes do need to come off as well. 

He puts his hands on his hips to watch her pull her t-shirt over her head and shove her shorts down over her hips. She’s not undressing nearly as elegantly as he did, but she’s on her back, and she can’t bear to look away from him for long. He’s muscled like a statue in a museum, one that moves and breathes and is leaning over her bed, coming closer. 

She wishes she owned pretty underthings. Wishes she looked more like a woman in them. 

Ben crawls up the bed towards her as her hands go to the lace bralette she had under her t-shirt and tug it over her head. He pulls her hands away from her body when she would use them to cover herself. Her cheap mattress dips under his weight, and the bedsprings squeak. She won’t be able to look her neighbors in the eye tomorrow.

“I spent an hour, the night we met, thinking about what color your nipples were,” he says, pinning her hands to her sides. He leans down and licks a wide semi-circle under a breast. “I felt like such a creep.”

Rey gives a startled gasp when he sucks one into his mouth, pulling hard. “Did you guess right?” 

“Hmmm,” he says noncommittally, switching sides. Rey’s pussy pulses hard enough to make her jerk her hips. “I didn’t want to decide. Thinking about it was one of my major hobbies.” His mouth is wet and warm on her, the best thing she’s ever felt. 

“And now?” Rey asks. Ben kisses the vee of her collarbone before finding her mouth again. His hand trails down her stomach. 

“Now I’m going to think about the color of your cunt,” he says, fingers running over the elastic lace of her knickers. He presses a knuckle against her, and Rey shivers. He can probably feel how soaked she is right through the fabric. 

He lowers his weight slowly against her side, pulling her thigh between his legs. His hand continues to stroke between her thighs, sweeping out over the soft inner skin and up over her stomach. It’s winding her up like a top, and she fists her hands to keep from clawing at him. 

“You don’t want to find out?” she asks breathlessly. 

He smiles at her under heavy-lidded eyes. 

“I do. I do. Show me, then.” 

He rolls away from her to give her room to pull her knickers down and toss them off the bed, looking politely away as she has to lift her hips. When he looks back, he palms himself through his boxers, staring down her body.

“No, really,” he says. “Show me.” He tugs at her knee, pulls her legs apart. 

Rey squirms and blushes, which only seems to encourage him. She slowly parts her thighs, wondering if he can see how swollen and wet she feels. She thinks he can probably smell it. She closes her eyes when he wraps a hand around her calf and pulls it towards him. Opens them again when she hears him rustling with his clothing again, finally taking his boxers off. 

She has to bite her lips together when she sees his cock tilting up towards his navel, dusky and wet at the tip. 

Jewish, she reminds herself, ogling it. 

The expression he gives her is confident, though she’s nearly as concerned as she is impressed. If Ben has any areas of self-doubt, none of them are between his legs. 

He leans back over her, pressing himself up against her hip. When he kisses her, his lips are harder, more demanding. His hand dips back between her legs, clever, calloused fingers circling her clit. Rey feels a pulse of anxiety when Ben lifts his head to watch her face whilst he tries different patterns against her skin. 

“Um, so,” Rey finally says, turning her head away and looking to the floral prints on the wall. “I don’t usually...you know. I don’t come. When I’m with someone else. So don’t worry about it.” 

“Huh,” Ben says, sounding a little confused. He hesitates for a moment, hand still where it covers her pussy. She sneaks a look back at him, and his lips are pursed. 

Then he rolls over to his other side, away from her, facing her bedside table.

“No, wait, come back here,” Rey says, alarmed. “I still want to--”

Ben pulls open the drawer in her bedside table, roots through it. 

“You got a vibrator or anything in here?” he asks, voice as calm as though he was asking to borrow a cup of sugar. 

“I-” Rey hesitates, and Ben turns back to give her a disappointed look. “Under the bed. Shoebox.” 

Ben’s shoulders disappear as he leans over the edge of her bed to search for it. 

He makes a throaty noise of success when he finds it, coming back with the little pink hard plastic wand she bought on a dare. It looks ridiculous clutched in his big fist. But Ben is unperturbed when he switches it on. 

Rey covers her face with her hands when he rolls back over her and pins her hips in place with his own. His cock leaks against her stomach when he wiggles her into the position he wants: legs spread, one foot dangling away from him over the bed. 

“What are you doing?” Rey mumbles in embarrassment, hiding her face against his shoulder.

“Getting you off first,” Ben says, bringing the toy down between her legs. _“_ _Then_ I won’t worry about it.” 

He leans down to kiss her closed and resisting lips, licking and teasing at them until she opens her mouth for him. When his tongue presses against the roof of her mouth, she feels the tip of the wand press against her clit. 

It does work, when she does it. 

It works even better, when Ben does it.

Her breath comes in little pants as he rubs the toy in circles against her, and he smiles against her mouth when she clutches at his shoulders. 

She whines as the tension in her core twists tighter. 

“Come on, sweetheart,” Ben whispers. He kisses the side of her mouth. “You can do it.” 

Whether it’s benediction or permission, it helps. Rey comes with an embarrassing whimper, eyes squeezed shut, face pressed into Ben’s neck. Her body squeezes and contracts, and she wishes it could be around him. She snuggles closer to his big, warm body, seeking the stimulation of the prickle of his leg hairs against her feet, the beads of sweat along his chest. 

Sweet release trickles out through her limbs, leaving them warm and heavy. 

She hears the vibe clatter on the floor as he tosses it away. He kisses her one more time, just a swipe of his open mouth against hers, and then he pulls away and sits up. Her hands reach out for him blindly, but he stands and walks back to his folded clothes. 

Ben pulls a condom out of his wallet and kneels back on the edge of the bed. 

She knows her eyes are wide as he tears it open with practiced hands, but she tries to school her expression to something a little more sophisticated than the deer in the headlights she fears she is currently projecting. 

Ben rolls it on and gives a perfunctory pump of his cock with one hand. Rey opens her arms to him as he leans back over her, settling his weight over her hips and bracing himself by both arms on either side of her head. She cradles him with her thighs, conscious of her breathing, thinking in four-counts. 

Ben hesitates as the tip of his cock slides through her folds, over her clit in a first, gentle thrust. 

“You have done this before, right?” he asks, a little belatedly. 

“Sure, yeah,” Rey says. And maybe that’s not strictly, one hundred percent true--but she’s done things with boys in the backs of cars and the corners of janitorial closets, she’s not some wide-eyed innocent who’s never seen a dick before. 

Ben, reassured, presses his lips to her temple and dips his hips to catch his tip at her wet and swollen entrance, intending to slide home on one long stroke. 

Intends to, anyway, because Rey can’t stifle a yelp before he’s halfway in. It’s not a sharp pain, like knives, but a little pulling one, like a muscle cramp. 

Ben freezes. 

“You little liar,” he mutters, pulling out. He hesitates then, hips still hovering over her. “Jesus, Rey, you make me feel like a monster sometimes.”

Rey sucks in a deep breath. “Don’t stop,” she begs. “I’m fine, please keep going. I was just surprised.” 

“Oh, I’m not stopping,” he says, twisting to his side and then nipping her earlobe in vengeance. His knee pushes her legs further apart before he brings his hand back between her legs. “But you need to relax a little, or the rest of this is only going to feel good for one of us.” 

She tries consciously to relax, which is a little counterproductive, because when Ben slips one long finger inside her, her body reflexively clutches around it. He groans. 

“You’re going to ruin me for anyone else, but I’m also afraid you’re never going to want to fuck me again,” he complains. 

“I still want you to fuck me for the _first_ time,” Rey argues, grabbling him by the ears to pull him closer. 

Ben is not distracted, and continues to slowly pump his forefinger in and out of her. She’s so slick that it moves easily, even if she can’t contemplate taking the shape still pressed up against her hip. 

Radiohead is still pouring out of her little clock radio, and Ben begins to sing along as his hand moves between her legs. 

_Oh it’s the best thing that you’ve ever had_

_The best thing that you’ve ever, ever had_

“You’re singing now?” Rey says on a choked laugh when Ben’s thumb swipes across her clit.

_It’s the best thing that you’ve ever had_

_The best thing you have had is gone away_

“Shhh,” Ben croons into her skin, between verses. “Don’t think. Just listen to the music.” 

_Don’t leave me high_

_Don’t leave me dry_

He slides a second finger inside her and her hips jerk before she seizes the thread of melody again. Ben’s low, throaty voice continues:

_Don’t leave me high_

_Don’t leave me dry_

He pulls his hand away and replaces it next to her head. She can smell herself on his fingers, and it’s perversely arousing. Yorke launches into the guitar solo at the same time that Ben presses his cock back inside her, and this time, he opens her up slowly, just tiny jerks of his hips until his stomach is flat and trembling over hers and his balls are resting against her arse. 

Rey lets out a long and shaky breath, adjusting to the feeling of him inside her. She’s full of him. Not just her pussy, which is flexing from the mere effort of containing him. Her chest feels tight and solid. Too full. Emotions jam her throat, her heart. 

Ben’s forehead rests against hers, his hairline damp with sweat. She finds the idea that this big, strong man is putting all his power into just holding himself back unexpectedly pleasing. 

“Christ,” he breathes. “You feel like heaven.” 

He groans when Rey plants her feet, gets enough leverage to push back against him when he drags his cock out of her. 

“Can I fuck you now?” he begs. “I really want to fuck you now.” 

In response, Rey digs her fingertips into his shoulders and clenches around his length.

His breath catches before he makes a first hard thrust into her. 

All she can say is ‘yes,’ and ‘please,’ as he begins to find a rhythm. She doesn’t think it’s the song on the radio. He has some song in his mind, and he’s fucking her to it. He kisses her until their mouths grow too loose and sloppy, and her teeth cut into his lower lip. 

He pulls far enough back to see her tits jerk in time with his thrusts. She feels exposed and vulnerable and seen, but Ben’s face, when she sneaks a look at it, is lost and unaware. He’s so beautiful when he forgets to think about it. When he doesn’t know anyone is looking at him. 

“Oh, Rey,” he mutters, when he props himself higher over her, changing the angle, “isn’t this good? Isn’t it?”

She doesn’t have words for this. She doesn’t know the song for this. It’s too overwhelming, the way she feels. 

She wraps her legs around his hips and holds on until he says her name one more time and jerks inside her. 

Ben lets out a long exhale and lets his weight fall over her, almost suffocating her. His lips are limp against the side of her face. She feels suddenly bereft when he pulls out, the last stroke painful in a way all those before were not. 

She blinks at the ceiling, feeling a little cold and a little lonely while he deals with the condom.

But then the mattress is dipping again with this weight, and Ben is gathering her up in his arms. He puts a hand below her knees to toss her legs over his and another behind her head to rest it on his shoulder. His hand goes into her hair, scratching over her scalp. 

She can hear his heartbeat slowing from this position, but hers is still racing. 

After a few minutes, Ben slides away and goes into her bathroom. When he reemerges, he checks her locks and turns out the lights without pulling his boxers back on. He slides back into bed and pulls her into the same position before yanking her duvet over them both. 

She can bet he thinks she’s asleep before he rubs his lips over the top of her head. 

“How am I ever supposed to learn how to live without you now?” he whispers. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So I know that Mark Knopfler is not the character singing in "Money for Nothing," but it makes me cringe even though I love it so. Not all art ages well. 
> 
> Minstrels told me that nice British girls don't say 'cock' but I just...I just...I am very American in this respect. Cock. Cock is good.


	9. No Devil

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Special thanks to @okpianist for the music theory in this chapter. I love how this fandom has an expert for just about anything any fic needs.

**_Now_ **

They finish their set with a cover of ‘Elderly Woman Behind the Counter in a Small Town.’ Luke’s advice. Most of this audience are not familiar with Rey’s music, and no matter how well Rey plays, they’ll get a bigger dopamine rush from singing along to something with emotional resonance. Then buy more merch, download more songs, make Luke more money, et cetera. 

If Rey was afraid this crowd would boo her when she slandered their favorite with her songs, she need not have worried. The people within water bottle chucking range not only paid more than a hundred dollars apiece for their tickets, but they’re mostly of the cohort that have followed Ben since he joined the Knights of Ren at age eighteen--nearly twenty years ago. These fans have mortgages and babysitters and a veneer of manners. They listen politely and clap at appropriate times and wait for the main act to come on.

It’s a world away from a sticky pub in the West Midlands. 

Rey’s not completely unknown; a couple of people throw plastic-wrapped bouquets at the stage at the end of her set, and she assumes people brought flowers for her, not Ben. He might not be wearing the stupid helmet anymore, but he doesn’t exactly evoke flowers in his stage presence. 

So Rey scoops up the flowers, smiles and waves at the crowd, and then starts to break set, dodging Ben’s roadies and sound engineers as they scurry around her. Ben’s surely down in his dressing room, and she doesn’t see him before they’ve cleared the stage and started the laborious process of carting their gear back to the trailer. 

She manages to miss most of his set by carrying things out to the van one by one, and she has the cheerful thought that she won’t even have to invest in those noise-cancelling headphones she’s considered. They finish stowing everything in the trailer and get back to the theater just as Rey hears Ben hit the last notes of his encore. Ben got the same advice she got; he’s ending on a cover, even though everyone here knows the words to all of the Knights of Ren’s songs. 

But that’s not painful, that doesn’t make her feel like putting her boot through a wall. It’s just Ben singing, and that happens to her in cars and commercials and public places all the bloody time. 

She’s not yet in a bad mood when Poe runs up, waving his mobile in the air.

“Pitchfork has the review up!” he yelps, all shining eyes and red cheeks. Even though they could each pull out a mobile and check, they crowd around him to grab for the little glowing screen.

“8.7 is fucking incredible,” Poe gasps, all of them looking at the little orange arrows that signify the “best new music” designation. 

8.7 is beyond her wildest hopes. 8.7 is legendary. 8.7 is far better than Ben got on his last album. 

“Let me see,” Rey says, snatching it from his hand so that she can read the full review. 

It’s glowing. She should be thrilled. Rose and Finn have located the review on their own devices, and are squealing as they scroll through it. 

It starts well enough. _On her debut album, Birmingham singer Rey Johnson invites you to think hard about loss and how it changes a person,_ some kind words about her voice, some quoted phrases-

Rose has stopped in the middle of the review and is mouthing ‘uh oh.’ 

_Showing the kind of quality polish that Skywalker Records can still reliably deliver--_ well, fine-- _as well as the lyrical delicacy and melodic hooks we’ve come to associate with rumored songwriter (and Skywalker scion) Ben Solo_ …

Rey sees red. When she looks up, the smiles of her bandmates have fallen as they watch her. 

“Who the hell is _rumoring_ Ben as the songwriter?” she snarls, and they all wince. _Not it_ , say their eyes as they glance among each other. 

Finn rubs the side of his face. “It’s not anyone who knows anything. It’s that knob from the release party, the one who made an arse of himself then fell in the pool. He put it in his review.” 

“Christ, none of you wanted to tell me?” Rey asks. 

“Erm, no,” Jannah laughs nervously. “You’re not altogether rational on the subject.” 

She stomped out of one interview. One. Rey lets her breath out through her nostrils. It’s fine. Fine. Who cares what people think. She knows the truth. 

“You know what always makes me feel better?” Rose asks. “Dinner. I scoped out the spread. It’s make your own paninis!” There’s a tinge of desperation to her happy chirp, but Rey’s not one to turn down food, let alone food from a negotiated rider to the tour contract. 

So Rey pastes a smile on her face and congratulates her bandmates on their review. It is a good review, after all. Pitchfork thinks it’s a contender for album of the year. A lot of people will pick the album up just for that review. If they think Ben wrote her songs, she should take it as a compliment. His two Grammys. Blah blah retch. 

The food is laid out in a break room totally incongruous to the lavish art deco space above. It could be situated in any office park in the world; grey walls, peeling terrazzo-print linoleum, walls pasted with employment law notices, workplace policies, and hand-washing instructions. 

The table does fairly groan beneath a spread of antipasti and the makings of pressed sandwiches. On the counter, there are three panini grills set out and plugged in. Rey’s heard stories about venues feeding their performers listeria-laden cold cut sandwiches and moldy vegetables, and she’s pleased to see real food. 

Her group are piling plates and pulling bottles of water from the fridge when the first members of the Knights of Ren enter the kitchen. Ben’s band is a bit bigger than hers; he has a couple of brass and a backup vocalist. Rey doesn’t recall any of their names. She thinks the line-up has changed a few times over the years. This first one is a big, burly man, with a full beard and ink on his arms. That’s expected enough, but the ugly sneer on his face makes her rock back on her heels. 

“Oh, fantastic,” he says, eyes raking over Rey and then Rose, who is loading her plate with what appears to be all of the marinated artichokes. “They set out panini _and_ pussy for us. I love this place.”

The anger in his voice--not to mention his words--is like a slap to the face, so undeserved does it feel. Rey clenches her fists to respond (she’s from Birmingham, she remembers the first day of school and how best to respond to bullies), but before she can sock the man in the nuts or spit in his face, he’s grabbed by the neck of his t-shirt and swung around to look into the snarling face of Ben Solo.

“You’re off the tour,” Ben snaps. “Grab your shit and go home.”

The man laughs, like Ben’s playing along. 

“ _Now_ _,_ Cardo,” Ben says, getting right into the man’s face. The other musician might have a few pounds on Ben, but Ben’s taller and broader across the shoulders, and he looms right into him, crackling with menace. 

“It was a joke,” Cardo says after a long beat. “You can’t just throw me out for something like that. Shit, man, it’s just a joke.” 

“You want me to call the label and ask if they think it’s funny? Get out. I don’t need funny guys in this band.”

Cardo stiffens. “Hey, fuck you, _Kylo_. You didn’t even hire me. You can’t fire me, either. I’m calling Snoke.” 

Ben chuckles, a grating sound. “You think you’re the only asshole in L.A. who can play the bass? I can replace you with one text message. Leave. Before I break your fucking fingers, and you’re not playing bass for anyone, ever again.” 

There’s a stare-off for a fraught second or two--Rey thinks she hears Finn asking quietly if someone will take a bet against Ben--but then something in his face convinces the man, and Cardo slinks away, slamming the door against the wall as he goes. The other members of the band, who have silently filed in to watch the confrontation, part to let him out.

Rey’s lungs are burning for lack of air. 

“Excuse me,” she mutters, dashing out in the space the man created, taking the other direction. She leaves everything behind. She doesn’t think of anything but getting away.

It doesn’t work. 

She hears Ben calling after her, and he catches up to her before she’s made it to the building exits. His long legs. His determination. 

She spins to tell him off, and stops only because of how ridiculous he looks. He’s changed his shirt, but not his leather trousers, and his hair is sticking up all around his head because he sweated through it and it’s now dried funny. 

He’s also clutching the styrofoam plate bearing her panini like it’s the Olympic torch. 

“...you forgot your dinner,” he says lamely, thrusting it out at her. 

She takes it from him, undistracted. 

“You could have let me handle that. Now those assholes you play with are going to be slashing my tires somewhere outside of Omaha.” 

His expression darkens. “They won’t. There’s not a single one of them that can’t be replaced.” 

Rey pinches the bridge of her nose with the hand not holding a cooling panini. 

“This is going to be a disaster, isn’t it?” 

“Rey, I- this is why I wanted to talk,” he says, taking a step closer. 

She puts her free hand out to fend him off. “This is why I have a manager. This is why _you_ have a manager. Let them talk.” 

“Your manager’s as dumb as a sack of hammers,” Ben says, voice redolent with contempt. “And mine’s worse. You can’t even handle talking to me, Rey? Not even about business?”

The plate cracks in her hands. Rey eyes Ben uneasily, gauging his sincerity. “Business?” 

Ben’s cheeks flush. For all he lives here, he’s not got any more color in his face than when he was staying in Tanworth-in-Arden, and his thoughts go right to his face. “I...yeah, I guess that’s it.” 

Rey sucks on her lips. She supposes she’s due to hear Ben’s apology, for all she’s been dodging it for five years. Rey has always thought that apologies do a lot more for the person making them than the person hearing them. But if he’s been burning up with it for these many years, she might see if she feels better for hearing him out. 

“Fine,” she tells him. “We can talk. Business.” 

Ben’s relief washes across his face. “Great. Where are you staying?” 

She laughs. “None of your business.” The idea she's going to take Ben back to a motel room--where she _sleeps_ \--is ludicrous. 

Ben’s undeterred. “Well, my place is all the way out in Malibu, but-” 

Rey laughs again, rolling her eyes. “There’s a McDonald’s across the street. We can walk there.” 

“You want to have this conversation in a McDonald’s?” Ben asks incredulously. 

“There’s nothing I want to hear from you that can’t be shared with the Hamburgler,” she tells him. 

Ben works his jaw and then suggests a ramen restaurant down the street, which proves an acceptable compromise. There’s nothing emotionally fraught about soup. She’ll hear him out and it will be done. They will act as professionals. 

She hadn’t quite figured on it requiring her to get in a car with Ben Solo. 

They walk in silence to the car park, and Ben points out a black, late-model Audi. He opens her door, and she blushes against her will. 

Her skin feels too tight. It’s too intimate, being in an enclosed space with him. Her mind gathers little details against her will; she did not wish to learn new things about Ben. The station his radio is tuned to. The color of his gym bag in the back seat. The way he squints at his reflection in the rearview mirror and then tries to finger-comb his hair into compliance.

It’s all Rey can do not to pull her knees to her chest to hide from it. 

The restaurant is blessedly dark and quiet when they enter; there is only one other couple at the bar, drinking Kirin and picking bits of pork out of their bowls. 

A hostess shows them to a black upholstered booth in the back, and Rey slides to the wall. 

Ben catches her hand as she pushes the little paper drink advertisements away, and runs his thumb across the thickened skin at tips of her fingers.

“You practiced,” he says softly.

Her lips twitch. “I practiced,” she agrees. 

Waits a beat too long before she yanks her hand away. 

She hides her face in the menu while Ben unashamedly stares at her. 

“Stop it,” she mutters. 

He colors again and looks at his hands. 

The server comes by and takes their orders for soup; Rey gets a beer, Ben gets a sparkling water.

Ben shreds the labels on the bottle until Rey makes an impatient noise in her throat. 

His big hands clench on the bottle before he consciously relaxes.

“Okay,” he says, and she braces herself. She’ll be civil, she decides. It was all a long time ago. She will hear him out, she will be civil, and he’ll be satisfied. 

“Our backup vocalist is only signed through Stanford,” he begins, apropos of nothing. 

“I- what?” Rey says, confused. 

“So, I got creative control back in the last round of contract renegotiations,” Ben tells her, making significant eye contact as though she’ll be impressed. “I know you’ve got a one-hour set, but it’s only three or four songs out of ours, and I-”

“Wait, _what?”_ Rey interjects again. This isn’t at all what she thought he meant by ‘business.’

“Will you do the backing vocals?” Ben asks. 

Rey stares at him incredulously. “With the Knights of Ren,” she clarifies. 

She’d sooner stick her finger in an electric socket. 

Ben’s lips compress and relax. “You know the songs.” 

The server appears and slings bowls full of what appear to Rey to be random ingredients onto the table while Rey and Ben look at each other. 

He’s completely sincere, that’s the worst part. He’s waiting for her to accept. He thinks she’ll say yes, and three nights from now she’ll get on stage with him in Denver and sing duets in the same microphone. Like the past five years never happened. 

Adrenaline kicks through her veins. 

“Why would I do that?” Rey finally gurgles. “Why would _you_ do that? Why would we do that to each other? You want me to sing with you? If I want to feel like that, I can bang my head against the fucking wall.”

Ben grimaces, but doesn’t argue otherwise.

“I know it won’t be...easy. For either of us. Jesus, I know that.”

Rey takes a swig of her beer and glares at him. His soft brown eyes are wide and convincing. 

“You’ve had a lot of shit ideas in your life, Ben, but I have to say this is the worst one,” she tells him. 

He winces like she’s slapped him. “I thought this was what you wanted. I thought you-”

“You’re five fucking years late on this offer, Ben,” she snaps. 

He doesn’t deny it, picking at the little paper pile of labels. His throat bobs. 

“I can’t go back in time and change things,” he finally says. “You know I would.”

She doesn’t know that, and her face says as much. From her perspective, things worked out pretty okay for Ben Solo. 

“I would,” he reiterates. Hesitates. “I lost _you_.” 

She can’t meet his eyes anymore. 

“Is that what this is about, Ben? You thought you’d put me on the tour, put me in your band, and we’d pick up where we left off five years ago? Was that your plan?”

He doesn’t deny it.

She shakes her head, feeling tears welling up. 

“Well thats- that’s-” 

It’s indescribably stupid. 

She takes a deep, shuddering breath. 

“Was that it? That was what you wanted to talk about?” 

No apology, not really. He wishes things were different. Well, Rey’s wished things were different her whole life. That’s not an apology. 

Ben’s lower lip flexes. His eyes are wet and shining, the way she knows her own must be. “I want to talk about everything with you, Rey. Fifty thousand times a day, I want to talk to you again. You’re the only person I-”

He’s reeling a little bit in his seat. 

Rey tries to swallow past the tight ache in her throat. But it’s still all about him. What he feels. What he wants. 

“We can’t go back in time,” she tells him. “I’m not me from five years ago. I’m not- I- Even if you still feel the same. It wasn’t enough then, was it? It’s not enough now.” She shakes her head. “Let’s just focus on getting through the next few months.”

Their dinners are cooling in front of them, untouched. 

“I do appreciate what you’re trying to do for me,” she says, more quietly. Trying to dig into a well of generosity. “Even if it’s only because...well. Thanks. But I can’t sing with you.” 

Ben gives a tight nod, just a jerk of his head. His mouth is tight. Neither of them wants to cry in public. Not good for either of their images, she supposes. 

She pulls a couple of bills out of her pocket and tosses them on the table. 

Leaves him there alone, looking at the table set for two. 

* * *

**_Then_ **

It is the best day. 

When Rey wakes up, Ben is standing in her little kitchenette, surveying the contents of her cupboards. He’s pulled on his briefs, but nothing else, and Rey takes a mental photograph of the way his thighs flex when he squats to peer into her minifridge. 

He sees her moving beneath the duvet and smiles. “What do you eat for breakfast?” he asks. 

Rey doesn’t sleep well, as a rule. She goes to bed early, then wakes up several times a night to roam around her flat and check the locks and stare at her mobile. Last night she only woke up once, when Ben rolled too much on top of her and she was squished. She prodded him into a more comfortable shape and went right back to sleep. She feels like she’s just come back from a month’s holiday, the kind she’s never taken. 

“Tea and toast,” Rey says tentatively, holding the duvet over her chest. She needs to go to the loo, but she’s still naked. 

“That’s just carbs,” Ben scolds her. “How do you like your eggs?” 

She lets out a disbelieving snort. From what she’s heard of men, he’s a unicorn for sticking around at all, much less making her breakfast. 

“Scrambled is fine,” she says, her voice a little wobbly. But his smile is brilliant, like polished gems. He bends over the sink to fill her kettle, and Rey scoots to the bathroom. 

When she comes out, blushing and wrapped in a towel, Ben’s plating eggs and toast, and her mug has a teabag in it. 

She made him up, she thinks, not for the last time. He’s a figment of her overactive imagination, a physical manifestation of her daddy issues and her aching loneliness. 

He feels pretty real when he kisses her tits before she pushes him off to get dressed for the day. When he grins at her red cheeks. Pretty real for the way he’s still wearing yesterday’s clothes. 

She’s ten minutes late for work, which she never is, and she hadn’t reckoned on Grace Ellen’s big eyes to see her walk up, hand in hand with her American customer, clearly saying her farewells at 8 in the morning. 

Ben kisses her a sloppy goodbye against her car without a care for that, though, and Rey is still blushing when Grace Ellen clucks over her behavior. 

“If my Finn should find out!” Grace Ellen says, pretending to fan herself. 

Rey laughs; based upon Rose’s instagram feed, which yesterday featured Finn’s sleeping head against Rose’s flannel pillowcase, Finn has his own affairs to concern himself with. 

“Finn wouldn’t bother me about it, it’s Papa I don’t want you to tell,” Rey teases Grace Ellen.

Mr. Nyambura, known to everyone in and outside of his family as Papa, takes great pleasure in pretending a father’s outraged concern for Rey’s behavior, even given the scant months Rey stayed with the family before the careworkers decided that Rey required placing with a family with better residency paperwork. 

Grace Ellen makes a dismissive gesture. “Don’t you worry about Papa,” she says mischievously. “He knows all about handsome older men who convince nice girls to emigrate in secret.” 

Grace Ellen’s family in Kenya still has not forgiven Papa for stealing their only daughter away with him to England, for all they visit once a year. Rey has her own doubts as to who planned the stealing and emigrating; Papa is a very staid person, and coming up with such a plan would have been the most interesting thing he ever did. Grace Ellen, however, who made up the apprenticeship that freed Rey from the council’s purview, was entirely capable of such a scheme. 

Rey sputters. “Who’s emigrating? We’re just spending some time together while he’s on holiday.” 

“That’s not what his face said,” Grace Ellen teases her. “Tell me, where will I have to come visit you? I’ve never been across the pond.” 

Rey opens her mouth to respond, and then realizes that she doesn’t really know where Ben lives when he’s not in Tanworth-in-Arden. They’ve never spoken about his day to day life when he’s not there. 

“I’m sure he lives at the top of a tall building around Central Park in New York, like all posh American men,” she says instead. “But that doesn’t matter, because he’s going to fall in love with me and stay in the West Midlands forever.” 

She says it as a joke, but it sticks in her throat, and Grace Ellen doesn’t laugh. 

“Darling, don’t you think he already is? Haven’t you thought about it?”

Rey shakes her head. “Why think about it and make myself sad?” she says, more quietly. “I’m just going to be happy while I can.” 

Mrs. Nyambura isn’t normally a demonstrative person, but she hugs her then. 

* * *

There is, of course, nothing at all wrong with the Citroen. It purrs like a kitten upon ignition and whilst Rey drives it back down to Ben’s cottage so that they can swap their cars back. 

She thought he might turn up again at the garage, but he rings halfway through the afternoon to say that he’s making good progress and asks instead that she come to him with the car. 

Feeling very daring, Rey packs a change of clothing and a toothbrush from her flat before she drives south. It makes her nervous to drive the car without him, but she preens a little under the admiring looks she receives. 

She lets herself in to the cottage when she hears the music of the piano floating through the window. Ben’s seated on the bench in his pajamas, working the pedals barefoot. She recognizes Elliott Smith’s waltz, and Elliott Smith is a thing that could indicate deep mental distress, but Ben turns his head to smile at her, and she recalls that he’s just got a hard-on for dead singers. 

He pats the bench next to him, and Rey scoots into his broad, warm body while his left hand plays chord progressions. 

He kisses her forehead without lifting his hand from the keys. 

“Did you have a good day?” he says, and she can feel the rumble of his voice through her chest. 

“Yeah.” She squirms in place. “A little sore,” she confesses. 

He chuckles in satisfaction, which she should have known would be his reaction. 

“Not what I meant, but I’ll take it,” he says. 

“What about you? Did you write anything?” she asks. 

He pulls back a little. “Some lyrics. Also, I wrote a new arrangement of Layla, because I know better than Eric Clapton.” 

“Is that something you can put out?” she asks, confused. 

Ben sighs. “No, you can’t really make any money playing covers. You have to pay a licensing fee to whoever wrote it.” 

He’s not smiling anymore, and Rey feels sorry for changing his mood, as quickly as that. It’s not really any of her business if he’s writing or not. 

“What happens if you don’t write anything new?” she asks. “It must be terrible pressure.” 

Ben shrugs as though he’s not concerned about it. “I can still tour. I’d be fine. I’ve got a big enough back catalogue that I’d be okay for a while.” 

Rey’s sharp enough not to ask what would happen after a while, but he can feel her question.

“I guess I could teach music or something. Maybe be a studio musician. I’m probably a good enough guitarist.” His mouth twists. “My asshole uncle would probably want me to come back to LA and work with him.” 

LA, then. He lives in LA. 

“What happened with your uncle?” Rey feels very brave to ask, but she’s seen him naked, after all, and she thinks she knows him a little now. 

“Oh, the usual thing,” he says airily. “He wanted me to join the family business, I wanted to run off and join a band. He didn’t let me take more than the clothes on my back. He said I’d be back in three months--it’s been twelve years. He was wrong, and I was right.” 

“And your parents?”

“My dad was dead already, and my mom was--I think a Buddhist? I think she was being a Buddhist somewhere at that point. I mostly stayed with my uncle, since he was the ‘responsible’ one in the whole family, so he was the only one around to disapprove.” 

“I guess it worked out okay,” she says, because that’s the sort of thing people tell her when she mentions her dead parents, and she’s never heard one that doesn’t hurt. 

Ben laughs. “Yeah, I’m doing alright.” He tugs her more firmly against his side. “I’ll come up with some new material at some point, and the next album is all mine.” 

“Play something for me,” Rey says. “I want to hear something you wrote.”

She hasn’t googled him to see how well he’s done; she guesses moderately well, given the size and location of the cottage, but she wants him to share his music with her. 

He hesitates. “I hate hearing my own voice,” he complains. 

Rey giggles. “That’s not a great trait in a rock star.” 

He rolls his eyes. 

“Just do it on the guitar or whatever,” she urges him. “You’ve sung for me plenty.”

“Not something I wrote,” he argues. “What if you hate it, and you think I’m a hack?”

Rey puts her mouth against the soft, downy spot below his ear. “I’ll still shag you even if your music’s terrible,” she teases him. “You’re alright with your hands in other ways.” 

He laughs, looking down at her with warm and affectionate eyes. “Just alright? Let me try again. I can do better than alright.” 

She knocks him in the stomach with her knuckles. “Don’t try to distract me. What if I look you up on my mobile?” He reaches for the pocket of her jeans, aiming to intercept her. 

“You write too. You haven’t played anything you’ve written for me.”

“I’m a mechanic. You’re a musician. I’ve shown you my art,” she volleys back. 

His eyes narrow playfully. “Fine then. Here’s my deal. You play something you’ve written, I’ll play something I did. Otherwise, I’ll just cook the steaks I have marinating in the kitchen.”

It’s been years since Rey ate steak, and she’s powerfully tempted to just shelve the idea, but some tiny part of her wants Ben to hear her just as much as she wants to hear him. 

“I never said no. I said you’d have to get me drunk first.” 

His eyes widen a bit. “Well.” He thinks for a second. “That can be arranged.” 

He gets up to go to the kitchen, and when he comes back, he’s got a boxed bottle of whisky with a red bow on it, and two glasses caught between his fingers. 

Rey startles to see the number on the side--the whisky’s older than she is, older than Ben, even.

“Oh, that looks like a present,” Rey objects. “You don’t need to open that just to get me pissed enough to play the crap I wrote on my keyboard.”

Ben disregards her and pulls the bottle out of the box, breaking the wax seal with an expert flick of his wrist. 

“No, I won a bet with my dumbshit manager. He said I’d never even book this trip, and I did.”

“I mean, I drink like...cheap beer. I won’t even appreciate that stuff.” 

Ben pours two fingers of whisky into each glass and waits for her to pick it up. “I don’t have anything else in the house,” he says. 

Rey grimaces. “Do you have anything to mix with it?” Maybe she should try to look a little cooler about this, but she’s unfond of whisky to begin with. 

Ben’s eyebrows rise. “You mean like ice?” 

Clearly he’s not opposed to feeding her thirty-five year old whisky, but he draws the line at blending it with coke. 

Rey just smiles at him expectantly, and he goes back to the kitchen, returning a couple of minutes later with a jar of maraschino cherries. 

“These aren’t mine,” he mutters, popping the lid. He spoons a syrupy cherry out and into her drink. Looks at her. Adds another. “Say when,” he tells her. Rey watches him add a third, a fourth. “Jesus,” he says. 

Seven cherries is the right number, Rey decides. They clink glasses, and Rey tosses back her cherries soaked in twenty quids worth of liquour. 

“Feel like playing yet?” Ben asks her after draining his own glass. 

“Yeah, fine, I will, but leave the bottle. And the cherries,” Rey says. “Are you on YouTube?”

Ben sighs and fishes his mobile out of his pocket, then roots around in a bag of equipment in the corner of the room for headphones. He slips them over her ears. “I’ll go make the steaks,” he says. “After dinner, though, you’re singing whatever you wrote _before_ guitar practice, alright?”

Rey lifts her hands in innocent submission, and Ben pulls up a single song from his mobile and plugs in the headphones. 

“Ben Solo: No Devil,” the track listing reads. 

He hits play and nearly runs from the room.

Rey pours another glass of whisky and cherries and closes her eyes to focus on the song. 

It starts spare: just drums and Ben’s voice, nearly conversational in tone. The sound is crisp and professional, and Ben’s singing is clear and unaffected. Other instruments join in one by one: a keyboard, a mandolin. The lyrics are wry, almost rueful. 

_Oh I believe, man, I had potential_

_If I had got right_

_I could have been there, could have been special_

_In the white light_

“Ben, this is really good!” Rey calls, trying not to sound surprised. She can’t hear his response. 

A brass section joins in, followed by backup singers as the tempo increases and Ben’s voice begins to sweep through the octaves. It’s strong and forceful, but the words are nothing but regret. 

_I'm having trouble, I'm not well_

_I got lost along the way_

_The devil dragged me straight to hell_

_No sleep no way you can't stay_

The horns are triumphant, but the song trails off in a minor trio on the keyboard, without a resolution. Rey hits play again. Listens to it again. Listens to it a third time. It's just as good as anything else on her playlist. 

Rey puts the headphones down and makes a beeline for Ben in the kitchen where he’s searing the steaks on the stove. His back is tense, and he’s pretending great interest in the sizzling meat. Rey wraps her arms around his midsection, careful not to burn herself, and puts her cheek against his back.

“That was amazing,” she says. 

“It didn’t sell well,” he retorts. 

“People are stupid. I really liked it.” 

He’s quiet for a minute as he flips the steaks with his salad tongs. “Thanks,” he says shortly. 

“You really wrote all that?” she asks. 

He nods, the movement shaking his back where she’s pressed against him. 

“That’s amazing. It should be on the radio.” 

His shoulders flex. “The radio disagreed.” 

“Are there any more?” she asks. 

Ben takes the steaks off the stove and bends to stick them in the oven, forcing Rey off his back. 

“No, that’s the only one I put out by myself. I have others with a group.” 

Rey cocks her head at him. “But you’re trying to write more by yourself? You should, if you’ve only done one.” 

The dimple in his cheek flexes, even though he’s frowning. 

“That’s the idea,” he sighs. “My label wouldn’t spend any money promoting a solo single.”

“Well,” says Rey. “Fuck them.” 

“Yeah, right?” he says, perking up a little. “I’ve got a couple months. Someone else is bound to come along.” Rey retrieves the bottle from the room, and pours herself a third drink. She’s feeling warm and content--even more so once Ben feeds her the steak and a big salad with parmesan crisps and fresh tomatoes. 

It’s a fever-dream of domesticity. Rey knows they’re just playing house. She knows this isn’t his life, or hers. But like the cherries and liquor, it slides down and heats her chest. 

The bottle’s half gone by the time the dishes are wiped and put away, but Ben doesn’t forget her promise, nearly frog-marching her to the piano. 

“Alright, alright,” Rey says meekly, sitting down at the keys. “Bring that bottle here, then turn around.”

“What?” Ben asks. 

“Don’t _look_ at me,” Rey says. 

He laughs and turns around. Rey takes a last swig, directly from the bottle, and sets it on the floor under the bench. 

Rey spreads her fingers wide on the keys. Takes a deep breath. 

She plays the chords in A major: it’s a stretch for her hands, but the moody ostinato was the music that rattled in her head for the better part of a year before she finally got it down. 

_I couldn't find quiet_

_I went out in the rain_

_I was just soaking my head to unrattle my brain_

_Somebody said you disappeared in a crowd_

_I didn't understand then_

_I don't understand now_

She breaks off after the first verse, flushing.

Ben’s quiet behind her. Then she feels his hand stroke along her shoulder. He’s turned around to see her hands on the keys. 

“Is there more?” he asks, his voice tight. 

Rey nods.

“Keep playing,” he says.

Rey clenches her hands and continues. Her sad thoughts. Her grief. She feels transparent as she sings the remaining verses, the revealing chorus. She keeps her eyes shut, as though that will hide her. 

She should have picked another song. This one’s too revealing, too honest. 

_I’m so surprised you want to dance with me now_

_I was just getting used to life without you around_

She lets the last chord die, then swivels up to look at Ben. 

He’s all the way across the room, his arms slack at his sides. He scrubs his hand back through his hair and gives a little laugh and shake of his head. He’s staring at her like he’s never seen her before, his eyes round and his face a little pale.

They stare at each other for a minute, Rey trying to comprehend his expression, his shock. 

“Again,” Ben says. “Play it again. And then all the rest of them.” 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The way the music industry in America works (based on my research for this fic- I'm not in the biz) is that a label will pay an advance to an artist for the rights to an album or several albums. The artist doesn't get any more money until they've generated enough revenue (through song sales, traditionally, or ads, touring, merchandise in a "360" deal) to pay back the advance and the cost of producing and promoting the album. Only then does the artist get royalties.
> 
> If an artist wants to play someone else's song in concert, the venue usually has a broad license allowing that without prior permission. To actually record someone else's song, you need a different type of license that might be individually negotiated. Usually the original artist gets the bulk of the royalties. Otherwise, you get a lawsuit like the one by the Marvin Gaye estate against Pharell and Robin Thicke over "Blurred Lines" for copyright violation.
> 
> In this chapter, you hear Ben singing "No Devil" by San Fermin, which did not get nearly the play I personally feel it deserved, and Rey singing "Pink Rabbits" by the National. They're both on the linked Spotify playlist, but I recommend watching the YouTube video of the National's Tiny Desk Concert at NPR- Pink Rabbits is the last song- to get a feeling of what Ben hears.


	10. Yours & Mine

**_Now_ **

Stanford is an unqualified success. They spend two leisurely days driving north on Highway One, arguing about the playlists and the traffic laws, getting out of the van to take pictures in front of beaches and mansions and elephant seals. They pass the night in Monterey and make friends on the beach who are thrilled to hear they’re a touring band. They keep the windows rolled down and Rey thinks that if the rest of her life looks like this, she’ll be happy with it. 

Frost Auditorium in Stanford is an unassuming open space in the trees, and even though it’s probably the largest crowd they’ve performed for, Paige is fine after a few minutes with her head between her knees. They’re university students and hipsters, mostly; Rey’s core audience. People their age or a little younger, wearing hoodies and rain coats in the faint green drizzle of Palo Alto. Poe tells Rey, later, that they seemed more fired up to see her than the Knights of Ren, who fall into not just a different age bracket but a different tax bracket. 

Rey struts out and sings,

_Somebody lit the store on fire_

_Somebody lit the house on fire_

_Somebody lit the crowd on fire_

Rey’s hips sway as she performs at the thrust front of the stage, and she understands why people chase this high their whole lives. The crowd all sing along to ‘Motion Sickness.’ It’s rising again on the Adult Alternative chart. 

After their set, she grabs a salad from the kitchen and heads back into the crowd to sign merch all the way through Ben’s set. Other than from that distance, she doesn’t see him at all; his band departs immediately after its set for places unknown. Or not unknown—they all have to be in Denver for the next show in less than 48 hours. While Ben and the Knights of Ren can sleep on their bus, for Rey and her band, that means driving to Bakersfield in shifts as soon as they’re done breaking set, while they’re all vaguely funky from playing under the klieg lights. The next two days are a blur of unfamiliar places streaking by at 70 miles per hour--the Mojave Desert, Las Vegas, Grand Junction. 

When they make it to their room in Grand Junction, Rey does no more than strip off her blue jeans and fall into bed across from Rose, exhausted. She’s lived alone for six years, and constant proximity, even to her beloved friends, is draining her faster than the sleepless tour schedule. 

She sleeps poorly, especially when Poe replaces Rose, halfway through the night, and Rey nearly brains him with the hotel phone. They are going to need a band meeting about tour sleeping arrangements in short order, because Poe snores and is not reliably gay enough to be acceptable as Rey’s permanent roommate. More privately, Rey is going to need a meeting with Rose about how this always ends. 

Poe waits until halfway through their pancake breakfast the next morning to divulge that their performance at Red Rocks will be streamed live via satellite service. Paige turns green and chokes on her crepes even as Rose grins in delight. 

“You were going to mention this when?” Jannah demands, examining the ends of her twist out critically. Poe doesn’t understand that four-fifths of the band would want to spend some extra time to look pretty if they’re going to be on the telly. (Finn is pretty enough when he rolls out of bed, Rose says with syrupy sweetness). 

“You’re here to manage this stuff,” Finn chimes in, glaring at Poe. Rey wonders how tense Poe’s eviction was, the previous night. 

“I am managing it,” Poe protests. “It’s all licensed and dealt with.”

They all stare at him. “I mean, were you planning not to play very well until you found out that forty thousand subscribers were planning to watch tonight too?” he adds defensively. 

* * *

Red Rocks is on the outskirts of Denver, nearly four more hours of driving east on I-70 in canyons blasted out of the raw mountain rock. They pass shuttered ski resorts whose names they’ve heard in movies. 

Red Rocks Amphitheatre is carved into a natural sandstone formation, with risers of bare stone open to the elements. It’s beautiful—like playing in a piece of art. 

Soundcheck takes twice as long to accommodate the unusual acoustics of the space and the video equipment cluttering the stage, but when Rey looks out over the seating for nearly ten thousand, she is satisfied. 

They have just enough time to go backstage and eat--which for Red Rocks, means downstairs through a cinder block tunnel inscribed with the graffiti of decades’ worth of previous performers. Cher and Steve Miller and Wilco, rubbing elbows in permanent marker. 

Rose squeals and pulls an eyebrow pencil out of her handbag, finding an unclaimed space and drawing a large charcoal grey heart for the band to initial. 

“Rey Johnson, 5/4/20,” Rey writes, feeling that sense of disassociation that gripped her on the drive to Skywalker Ranch. 

The spread for the evening is barbecue; something they’re all of limited experience with. Rey feels the first bite of sausage and potato salad land like a brick in her stomach and eats apple pie for dinner instead.

There are green rooms below the theatre with battered lounge chairs shoved in a semi-circle against the raw sandstone walls; they’re lucky, as the opening act, to be allotted one, even though they can hear muffled hoots and shouts from the room next door where the Knights of Ren will await their own showtime. 

Rey sits and fools around with a spare guitar while they wait for call; somehow, she’d expected that there would be more time to practice and compose while on tour, but even though every waking moment is devoted to the music, she’s barely keeping up with basic needs like sleeping and eating, let alone developing new material. She can’t compose in a van with five other people whilst traveling seventy miles per hour down the freeway. 

Paige can’t sit down; she’s pacing in the back, checking the tuning on her guitar every thirty seconds. Rey is about to have a word when she hears the door to the next doom hit the wall, followed by loud, angry voices.

“...live!” she hears Ben yell.

The members of Rey’s band turn as one to see a skinny redhead with a hipster beard skid past their own open door. The man is wearing stovepipe pants and a purple checked shirt that clashes with his hair, and he is holding up both hands to fend off Ben as he advances on him.

“Why the hell do I even pay you, Hux?” Ben growls at him.

“It’s a totally normal distribution deal!” Hux protests. 

“Which you failed to mention until after soundcheck? We’re on in less than two hours!” 

Rey knows that Ben doesn’t even tune his own guitar for soundcheck, so it’s not like he’s worried about being pressed for time on the music side. 

She suppresses a smile. He hasn’t primped for the broadcast either. 

Hux looks Ben up and down and attempts appeasement. “You look...fine.” 

Ben’s wearing a black shirt and black jeans; it’s the same thing he’s worn every day that Rey’s known him. But he goes to run a hand through his hair, and notices the rapt attention of Rey and everyone in her band while his hand is halfway there, leaving his arm dangling awkwardly over his shoulder. 

“Did you guys know about this?” he demands instead. 

Rey shrugs. “Poe told us this morning. I guess he and Hux talked?” 

Maybe Poe isn’t the worst manager in the world. Possibly he’s the second-worst manager in the world. 

“We’re not responsible for the satellite feed,” Hux tries to explain. “We just have to actually make our set time tonight.” 

Ben’s glare could strip the clear polish off Hux’ fingernails. 

“And I think your hair is very handsome today,” Rose chirps at him. He looks at her suspiciously, but even Rey can’t always tell when Rose is fucking with her, and Ben has absolutely no chance. 

“Do you want some pancake makeup?” Rey offers, despite every attempt to quash any remaining generosity of spirit towards this man. 

Ben’s face is taut and nervous while he runs his eyes over her, but he says, “yeah, if you have any handy, that would be great.” 

With her lips pressed firmly together, Rey hunts her makeup bag out of her satchel and finds a clean sponge, base, and highlighter. 

She shuffles her feet as she approaches him. Finn is making a face at her, and Rose looks absolutely fascinated. 

She tries to brush the makeup on from an arm’s-length away but when she gets a heavy streak across his big nose and he flinches, she realizes that only makes her look like the ridiculous one. 

So she gets close enough to him to see his chest expand and contract as she covers him in matte base for the camera. He’s imperfect, this close. A couple of zits, still. Uneven green-gold rings around his pupils. Too human. 

Hux creeps up to examine her work. 

“Some eyeliner and brow pencil too, I think,” he says critically, before Ben swats him in the chest to push him away. 

“You’re on your own for those, buddy,” Rey tells Ben, more than Hux.

“Go get them off the bus, then,” Ben tells Hux, who opens his mouth to protest running an errand before Finn snickers about Ben wearing eye makeup. 

“The sheer volume of underwear tossed his way suggests you’re wrong on the staying power of the guyliner trend,” Hux sneers. Finn curls his lip right back. 

Rey backs away, hands in the air. “And that’s my cue to leave,” she says, trying not to think too hard about what Hux just said. 

“Set time in ten, anyway,” Rose says, trying to break things up and usher Ben and Hux away.

“Rey,” Ben suddenly protests, as he has been watching various unpleasant expressions cross her face. “You know I don’t mess around with the groupies. I don’t fuck fans.” 

Rey gives him her best skeptical glare. She spreads her hands open in a small gesture, thumbs pointed back at her own chest. 

He gives a small, rueful laugh. “You didn’t even like the Knights of Ren.” 

“Well I did!” Poe says, even though nobody at all has asked him. It gives Rey a chance to break eye contact and also the tension. Rey manages to slip past them as Poe tells the story of Ben’s poster in his locker for at least the third time this tour. 

* * *

It’s unseasonably warm for May in Denver, and even more so under the glare of the lights the television crew has set up. The crowd looks like a sell-out, or close to. Poe had better have ordered enough t-shirts or she really will think about firing him. She wants to be the kind of rock star who can afford her own motel room, and selling merch is the fastest route to that level of financial freedom. 

Rey sees the camera lights go green, grabs her guitar, and walks towards the front of the stage, fingers already twitching for the first chord of “Yours & Mine.” She sees Poe stage right, blowing a kiss. She sees Rose and Finn settling behind their instruments and Jannah adjusting her microphone a final time. 

She looks around for Paige; she’s not where she should be, just to Rey’s left. She doesn’t just have the intro for their first song but also the backup vocals. 

Rey twists to the side and her eyes find Paige’s hunched figure in the gloom just offstage--just as she bends over and throws up on Ben’s manager. He screeches, and they windmill apart. 

“Jesus!” Rey yelps, jogging off-stage to render aid. 

Paige has, of course, burst into tears immediately after regaining control over her stomach. She holds her hands helplessly away from her body. Rey’s wearing a t-shirt over a tank top, and she strips off the top layer to wipe at Paige’s face as soon as she can set her guitar aside. 

Poe has run over from the other side of the stage, but without grabbing anything helpful like tissues or a spare shirt for Paige. 

“Rey! You need to get back out there,” he whisper-shouts. “You know you’re _live_?”

As if things weren’t bad enough, Ben is close on Poe’s heels.

“What’s going...shit,” he says, looking at Paige and Hux. 

Rey decides to ignore Ben and his constant lurking. 

“Someone grab her a shirt and tell them to cut the feed,” Rey snaps at Poe, Hux, whomever. “We can’t play until she’s ready.” 

Paige is now shaking in embarrassment. “It’s that goddamn smoked meat,” she swears. “I’m sorry, Rey, I’m so sorry.” She retches again. 

“Is everything okay?” Rose yells from on stage, obscured by the panels, and her voice is magnified through the entire venue’s sound system. Rey can hear a roll of laughter move through the crowd. 

Rey rubs Paige’s back as Poe runs off, mentally counting the number of people watching her band fall apart before their opener. 

Ben curses viciously and grabs Paige’s guitar off the ground. 

“What are you doing?” Rey barks at his retreating back.

“Come on,” Ben grits, walking more quickly towards the front microphone, then stooping to plug in. 

Hux, covered in vomit and looking close to tears himself, shoos Rey violently and puts one hand on Paige’s shoulder as though to hold her back. “Cameras are on!” he snarls. “Get out there or we’re all in deep shit.” 

The crowd have identified Ben now, and a cheer goes up from the front section. Ben hesitates a moment, fidgeting with the unfamiliar guitar. 

“Uh. This is Rey Johnson’s band. And I’m Kylo Ren,” Ben mutters into the mic, adjusting the capo on Paige’s guitar to the second fret. The crowd applauds, and a few whistles ring out. 

He takes a deep breath. 

Rey can’t see the faces of the other members of her band, but she can imagine them. They probably mirror her own.

Trying not to think too hard about it, Rey grabs her own guitar and steps back on stage just in time to hear Ben pluck E minor, followed by the first chords he ever taught her. D and G. She should have known Ben would notice. She should have known Ben would have heard this song at the past two performances, even though it’s not on the album. 

Ben sings, plaintively: 

_I am not the only traveler_

_Who has not repaid his debt_

_I’ve been searching for a trail to follow, again_

_Take me back to the night we met_

He makes brief eye contact with her as she reaches his side and plugs into her board, but doesn’t stop singing. Rey can’t spare the time to look back and check that Rose, Finn, and Jannah are with her. 

She takes a deep breath and joins him for the chorus, praying that Rose will hit her mark.

_I had all and then most of you_

_Some and now none of you_

_Take me back to the night we met_

Their voices merge just as well as they ever did, making it sound like they’ve practiced this duet a thousand times. The crowd goes wild as Rose hits the backbeat right on cue and Rey’s guitar joins Ben’s. Her shoulder jostles his as they sing into the same microphone. 

It’s one of the first songs she wrote after Ben left, sad and heartbroken and not yet furious at herself for missing him. It’s not complicated. And she didn’t think it was any good at the time. But now she does. 

Ben steps away after the chorus and leaves her to sing the rest of the song, but he holds the lead line steady through the outro. 

His are the last notes that flicker and fade, replaced by the roar of the crowd, who are on their feet, delighted to see Ben and Rey on stage together. He stands there for a moment, stiff, holding Paige’s teal SG Standard, and Rey realizes that he is rightfully afraid that she is going to be furious at him. For not asking. Again. 

He’s bracing for it.

Rey meets Rose’s worried eyes, then Jannah’s incredulous ones. Then shoots them a hesitant thumbs’ up. The crowd is thrilled, after all. Paige and Hux have moved out of sight, presumably to clean up. 

And Rey…

There is something to singing with Ben, after all. Even after everything. 

“Do you know the rest of our set?” Rey asks Ben, because they’re already in it, now. She’ll think about everything later, when tens of thousands of people aren’t privy to her every microexpression.

He gives a hesitant nod. 

Rey taps the list with her toe where it is taped to the floor, and Ben flashes her a tight smile of agreement. 

“Thanks, guys,” Rey tells the crowd, trying to sound like she has her act together. “I’m Rey. In tonight’s performance, the role of Paige Tico will be played by Kylo Ren.”

There is nothing but applause ringing through the air, and Rey tries to focus on that. 

* * *

Paige slinks back on stage three songs in, clad in somebody’s oversized Joy Division t-shirt, which she’s now wearing as a dress over her torn hose and Doc Martens. 

Rey puts her guitar down and hugs her around her resisting shoulders.

“You bitch, you still look better than I do,” Rey whispers, and she’s worried Paige will cry again. “You okay?”

“Y-yeah,” Paige whispers. “Are _you_ _?”_ She gives a significant look at Ben. 

Rey can’t answer, because Ben comes over to hand Paige her guitar back. He turns to go backstage without a word, but Rey catches his sleeve.

“You got a backup singer yet?” she asks, praying microphones don’t catch it.

Hope flares in his eyes. He shakes his head. 

_“ One_ song,” Rey says, her tone of voice warning. “Just tonight. One.” 

Ben’s brain blows right past any of those careful restrictions, she can just tell. A smile blooms across his lips.

“Come on for the encore,” he says, voice low. She hates how she feels to see his face softening. Like she’s being torn in two. 

But she forces herself to say it to him: “thanks.”

He nods carefully, and disappears to wherever he hides to listen to her set. 

Paige is still rattled, but they make it through the rest of their set well enough, and the crowd is responsive and kind after the substitution in the first third. 

When they begin to break set, though, Rey realizes what her offer, and Ben’s acceptance, is going to mean: she’ll be on stage with the Knights of Ren. And she’ll have to stay up in the wings for the entire time, waiting to go on. She’ll have to listen to them for two hours or more. She trudges offstage with her guitar in hand, and takes a seat on one of their amplifiers. She lets the bustle of the roadies setting up Ben’s equipment sweep around her. It’s just going to be like going to the shops and hearing his voice whilst buying knickers. It doesn’t have to be harder, knowing he’s twenty feet away. 

Ben must enter from the other side; she sees other members of the band pass by her to go on stage, but not him. He’s probably avoiding any opportunity for her to take her offer back. 

It’s not until she hears him launch into ‘Don’t Swallow the Cap,’ that she relaxes. She’s in it now. Nothing to be done but wait for him to thank Denver. 

Hux, now wearing an oversized Taylor Swift t-shirt over someone’s gym shorts, comes to stand opposite her. 

“Are you going back out there?” he asks stiffly.

“For the encore,” Rey tells him. 

He stews on that.

“I have a contract prepared. For you to do the backup vocals for the rest of the tour,” he says in a tight voice. “It pays far too much.” 

Rey laughs. “I’m not signing jack.” 

“Good,” Hux says. And then nothing else to her, as they endure the length of Ben’s set. 

He plays very well, unfortunately, and Rey’s lips curve around the words and fingers ghost in the shape of the chords before she can catch herself. It’s too easy to slip away from the present. To remember just loving Ben, loving the sound of his voice, his fingers on the strings. Feeling hopeful. Happy. 

She shakes her head when she hears Ben yell his goodnights to the crowd. She’s an ocean and a lifetime away from that girl. The rest of the Knights of Ren tromp past her without giving her more than a curious look, if that. Perhaps he didn’t even tell them. Would be in character. 

Hux, for his part, gives her a flat stare without encouragement when she peeks around the edge of the wings. She realizes that she doesn’t know whether to bring her guitar. 

She sees Ben pushing the upright piano to the center of the stage, and he beckons her over with a jerk of his head. The lights go to a dark wash of blue and purple as Ben brushes a hand over the piano bench in invitation. There’s a muted murmur of appreciation from the crowd when she walks over. 

“What am I playing?” she asks softly. 

He gives her a guarded smile. 

“Light Years,” he tells her on a fast exhale, then takes the seat right next to her. Before she can object to this arrangement as going beyond the strict terms of their deal, Ben pulls the microphone down between them, and she can’t risk speaking. 

Without introduction, his right hand flickers in the trill of opening notes before his left hand begins to press the slow pulse of the chords in E major. His big hands cover the scale better than Rey’s ever did, but it’s just at the edge of his vocal range when he begins to sing.

_I was always ten feet behind you from the start_

_Didn't know you were gone 'til we were in the car_

He doesn’t even have to look at her to tell her come in on the next verse, her lighter voice wrapping around his. 

_Oh, the glory of it all was lost on me_

_'Til I saw how hard it'd be to reach you_

_And I would always be light years, light years away from you_

_Light years, light years away from you_

She doesn’t sing every word of the song, the way she used to. She weaves in and out, letting his voice shine. It’s his set; he’s the headliner; this is his show. 

It’s her song. 

At the end, the crowd screams both their names. Rey’s afraid that she likes the way it sounds. 

* * *

**_Then_ **

Ben grabs audio recording devices from out of his equipment bag and sets them up around the room. Props his mobile on the piano to take a video of her hands on the keys. Rummages for staff paper and starts taking notes. Rey’s a little confused to see Ben so manic.

She tries to beg off, turns red. He wants her to keep playing. 

“No, no,” he insists. “Rey, come on, this is good stuff. Let’s get it down while it’s fresh in your mind. You have to document it while you’re in it, or you’ll sober up tomorrow and have no idea.” 

“Speaking from experience?” Rey asks.

He laughs and takes a swig from the diminishing whisky bottle. “For sure. Some of my best riffs are lost in Midwestern hotel rooms.”

Rey stares down at the piano. “You really don’t have to do this for me,” she says. “Why don’t we just play some Dylan and then, um…” She trails off. Her tentative plans had included fooling around on the sofa with Ben and then falling asleep on his chest again. 

Ben sits down next to her on the bench, puts his hand on her lower back. 

“Please?” he asks. “I thought it was good. I mean, I do this for a living, and I thought it was really good. I want to hear whatever else you have.” 

Rey shakes her head. “Nothing else is finished,” she says. “I don’t even know how to finish it.” 

“Let’s get everything recorded,” Ben says. “You can always add to it. I’ll help you.” He nuzzles the side of her neck in encouragement.

“Aren’t you supposed to be working on your own stuff?” Rey protests. “That sounds like a lot of work.” 

Ben shifts on the bench. “I’m not under contract with anyone. I can do whatever I want. And, Rey...well, let’s hear the rest of it.” 

He moves to the other side of the room, grabs his grandfather’s guitar, and props himself on the sofa, a stack of staff paper in front of him. At his insistent stare, Rey hesitantly begins to play again, her hands moving more assertively across the keys as she goes. 

“Good,” Ben breathes. “Show me everything you’ve got.” 

Hours later, when her eyelids are drooping and her hands are fumbling, Rey finally insists on quitting. If anything, Ben’s only picked up energy throughout the night. They’re surrounded by his notes, spread all over the floor. 

“I have work tomorrow,” Rey complains, rubbing her face. “I should probably get going, or…” She hasn’t had any more to drink since they started, and her buzz is converting to a hangover, but she really hopes he doesn’t tell her to drive home. 

Ben is startled from where he’s scribbling. He seems to come back to himself.

“Shit,” he says, standing and taking her hand to pull her up from the bench. “Come on.” He tugs her into his bedroom. 

Before she can cop to having brought an overnight bag in his car, he pulls a faded Joy Division t-shirt out of his dresser. Then he grabs her dress by the hem and yanks it off and over her head. Her skin is bare and cool for only a second before he replaces it with his own shirt. He grins at her like he’s clever. He hooks a thumb at the bathroom. “Feel free to use my toothbrush, or whatever else is in there.” Then his shoulder turns to go. 

“Oh, aren’t you going to-” Rey can’t quite get the words _come to bed_ out of her mouth. 

He spins and gives her a quick press of wet lips against her own. 

“In a bit, gotta get this stuff out of my head while it’s fresh,” he says, his mind already back in the other room. “Go to sleep, I’ll be in soon.” 

She hesitates, feeling strange about flipping back Ben’s duvet and crawling into his bed without him, but when he leaves the room, she figures there’s nothing else to be done about it. It’s after midnight, she thinks. 

His sheets are cool and clean, but his pillow smells like his hair. Ben pokes his head back into the room, guitar in hand. He smiles, looking at her tucked in, covers up to her chin. 

“Is it gonna bother you if I play in there?” 

She shakes her head. She can fall asleep anywhere, especially if she knows Ben’s out there playing. It’s staying asleep that’s the trick. 

“Cool,” he says. “Good night, beautiful.” Shuts the bedroom door behind him.

Rey’s fallen asleep in stranger circumstances, and the late hour helps, even once she hears the hum of guitar strings in the other room. She doesn’t think she stirs until the mattress dips under Ben’s weight, much later. She barely cracks her eyes, but sees that there’s a bit of light coming around his curtains. It must be almost dawn. Ben rolls over and gathers her to his bare chest, smelling of whisky and cigarettes. 

“Shhh, go back to sleep,” he whispers, and she does.

* * *

Ben’s still asleep when Rey’s finely honed sense of time wakes her up to go to work. She showers in his bathroom and uses his shampoo. Steals another of his t-shirts from his dresser. She’ll change at the garage. He rolls over into the space Rey vacated, but doesn’t wake up when she brushes her fingertips across the tangle of his hair in farewell.

It’s after lunch before she hears from him, on the garage’s line; it’s a good thing nobody needs anything more complicated than an oil change that morning, because her head aches and spins in equal measure. 

“Good morning,” Ben breathes over the line, and Rey can’t help but cradle the handset against her cheek and smile. 

“Good afternoon,” she teases him. “Have you had a productive day?”

He yawns so loudly she can hear it. 

“Well, I ordered a trumpet. Also a keyboard,” he says. “Should be here tomorrow.” 

Rey laughs. “I’m not sure if that’s a good sign or not. Can you even play those?”

“Not _yet_ ,” he says. “When are you coming back?” His voice has a sincerity that makes Rey forgive him for any missed expectations from the previous evening. 

“Oh, I’m not sure, let me check my schedule,” she teases him. 

“It’s Saturday. You’re supposed to be over here,” he tells her confidently.

“I do have friends, you know,” she tells him. “Who I like to see, sometimes.” 

“Hmmm,” he says, unimpressed. “You’re welcome to invite them over too, but they better play an instrument and like threeways.”

Rey cackles. “I’ll check with Finn on both his practice and his sexuality, then.” 

“Wait, that guy?” Ben says. “He didn’t like me. Ask your other friend. The short one. Doesn’t she play the drums?” 

“I’m glad you’ve already thought this out,” Rey tells him, giggling. 

“Or just come over. I’ve got some ideas. We’ll jam.” 

“Order me pizza and you can have me as long as you want me,” Rey bargains with him. 

“I’ll order every pizza they have, then,” Ben replies. 

* * *

Rey can smell the pizza when she lets herself in through Ben’s unlocked front door. Ben’s playing back a recording--she can’t tell whether it’s her on the piano or him--and seated at the drum set for the first time. He tosses the drumsticks aside when he sees her, though, and scoops her up, hands lifting her under her arse so that she has to wrap her legs around his waist. 

He’s freshly showered and clean-shaven, and his mouth tastes like toothpaste when he kisses her hello, his tongue pressing insistently at her lips until she wraps her arms around his neck and gives him the proper greeting he wants. 

He hums when she finally pulls away but doesn’t set her down, instead carrying her to his sofa. 

“I didn’t realize you played the drums too,” she tells him, her voice a little bit choked. 

“Not well,” he says dismissively, as though it’s not worth mentioning. He begins removing her clothing with practiced efficiency, his large, hot hands roaming authoritatively over her body. Her t-shirt and bra go flying, and then he’s kissing a line down her stomach, fiddling with the button on her shorts. 

“Oh,” Rey says, feeling a little short of breath. She can’t keep up with his shifts in mood.

“Yeah,” he agrees. He gets everything undone, then yanks her shorts and knickers off in one motion, leaving her naked, lying back on his sofa, in the full view of the front windows. She supposes that the bulk of Ben’s frame, once he kneels next to her and lifts her hips, would obscure most of the view if someone happened by with the evening post. Imagining the view of his black-clad body suspended over her naked one makes unfamiliar muscles clench inside her. 

He bends his head over her, and Rey’s struck by a bolt of embarrassment. It is very obviously not his first time doing something like this, but it is very much hers, and she doesn’t know what she should do as he lays gentle kisses down between her legs. 

“You don’t have to-” she mutters on a quick exhale. 

He looks up at her only long enough to grin. “I’d love to see you try to make me. Just lie back and relax, sweetheart.” 

She does--tossing an arm over her forehead as though she can hide from her own inexperience. Ben gets both hands under her ass and tilts her hips up before burying his face against her pussy. 

God, the noises he makes. He handles her body with as much expertise as he does his guitar, and makes her as responsive. 

Rey tries to stifle an embarrassing squeak when he licks across her entrance, but he only moans in appreciation. 

“Your cunt’s gorgeous,” he says, the vibrations of his voice against her clit making her quiver. He reaches up to grab her hand, pulls it away from her face. Replaces it in his hair. “I’m not going to be done down here ‘til I’ve made you scream, so don’t hold back.” 

When he finally rolls those plush lips across her clit, she can’t hold back. His lips and tongue press and recede expertly, and by the time he slides two long fingers inside her, she’s bucking against his face. 

It catches her by surprise, when she comes. It’s not one thing he does, or a different thing, that tips her over the edge. It just feels inevitable, the press of his fingers inside her, and the wet suction of his lips. 

She burbles a string of blasphemy that she mixes up with his name, and comes back to herself to see Ben sitting back on his heels, wiping his face against his shoulder. His expression is as delighted as if she gave him a present. 

“Good girl,” he says, rubbing his thumbs over her hipbones in approval. 

She must be a sight, legs akimbo, pink-cheeked and panting, but it also must be one he enjoys, because he’s ready enough to undo the catches on his own trousers and pull his hard cock out after a speedy survey of her body.

“Can I fuck you? Real quick?” he asks as he pulls a condom out of his back pocket. 

“You don’t have to be _quick_ _,_ Ben,” Rey says, her head still spinning. “We have-” 

Where are his priorities, exactly?

“Lots to do,” he finishes her sentence for her, then leans back over her. “Wrap your arms around my neck,” he orders.

When she complies, he lifts her up into his lap, splayed over his kneeling legs. He’s still got his clothes on, and she hides her face in his hair as he arranges her over his cock. Gasps when he presses up. It’s not painful, but it’s still an unfamiliar stretch as he bounces her body to push deeper inside her. 

He rubs her lower back with his broad, hot palm to encourage her to open up to him, and she twists until her stomach is pressed against his, his prickly dark hair scratching her belly. Ben’s arms squeeze her, and she can feel his breath catch. He presses his mouth briefly against the tops of her breasts.

She gives an experimental roll of her hips against his. It’s good. It’s even better like this; she can rub herself against him. She does it one more time until Ben’s patience evaporates, and then he’s thrusting hard enough up against her to make her gasp. Like he said, it’s quick--barely enough time for her to catch her breath before he’s yanking down on her shoulders and groaning into her neck. She catches the pulse of his cock inside her this time: a flutter like butterfly wings. But before she can even explore the sensation, he rolls her back down and pulls out with gentler hands. 

He ties off the condom and tosses it towards his kitchen, then kneels over her again.

“Hi,” he says, smirking. His hair is sweaty and clinging to his forehead. She brushes it back behind one of his ears. 

“Hello,” she answers back, feeling a little shy and also very naked. He rubs his nose against hers until she giggles. 

“Don’t feel the need to put your clothes back on, but are you ready to play?” he asks, and she blinks, because that’s not what she expected him to say while she’s naked and holding him in her arms, even if he has tumbled her more efficiently than tenderly today. 

“Whatever you want,” she responds, though, and just glories in his brilliant smile. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> In this chapter we hear "Yours & Mine," by Lucy Dacus (which is a banger), "The Night We Met," by Lord Huron and Phoebe Bridgers, and "Light Years," by the National. Are you seeing any trends yet?


	11. The System Only Dreams In Total Darkness

**_Now_ **

Rey knows to look for the hook in the bait. The fly in the ointment. She knows intimately, intrinsically, the crash that follows every rise. 

From when she was a little girl, she recalls the excitement that would follow one of her parents getting a new job. The first paycheck would go to bills, mostly--the electricity, the heat--but there would be ice cream at dinner, or fancy biscuits for tea. Some treat. The second paycheck would be even better: new clothes or toys for Rey, takeaways for the family, a day out at the cinema or the zoo. Sometimes this would go on for three paychecks, four--but by the fifth paycheck, always, there would be too much extra. Too much goodness to last. And her father, or, sometimes, her mother, would buy a little extra goodness and retire to their bedroom and stay there too long. 

And then the good times for Rey, at least, would end. 

So when Leia calls to tell Rey that her “friend Gayle” would _love_ to have her on to talk about the album, Rey isn’t even surprised that Leia would fail to disclose that this offer to perform on CBS This Morning--a good thing, even a great thing, as far as Rey’s career is concerned--is contingent upon Ben’s attendance at both the interview and performance. She’s just grateful that Luke fills her in on the details before she bumps into Ben at the airport bag check.

“I’d like to promise that CBS just wants to talk to you about your music, but they didn’t, so I can’t,” Luke tells her. 

Rey sighs--she knows the drill, after months of this, and she supposes that the reviews of their performance in Red Rock would hardly put the speculation to rest. They were good reviews. Glowing reviews. The musical press agreed that Ben and Rey looked great together and sounded even better. 

“It’ll be fine. They’ll have to ask about the album when they realize there’s nothing else there is to talk about,” Rey says.

“That’s my girl,” Luke responds, pleased. “Juice those sales. I bet you’re close to making back your advance already--I’ll get the digital sales reports next week. I’ll have to start putting together a proposal for your next album.”

Rey makes appropriately interested noises, even if she’s tempted to shop her next album to labels not run by Ben’s closest blood relations. 

“He treating you okay? On the tour?” Luke finishes by asking, in a nearly embarrassed tone of voice. 

Luke doesn’t specify who ‘he’ is, but Rey doesn’t pretend to misunderstand. 

“It’s fine,” she says, not sure if she’s being honest. “He’s a professional. I’m a professional. It’s all very professional.”

“Good,” Luke responds, gruffly. “That’s how he was raised.” 

Rey’s not sure who the subject was in that sentence. Who does get the blame, or credit, for Ben? 

* * *

Omaha, they find, doesn’t have a big airport. Nebraska, from Rey’s lateral navigation of the entire state, is merely one long, flat, cornfield. There are only two flights a day to New York, and Rey’s never had the luck in her life that wouldn’t lead to Ben’s guitars nuzzled up to her own equipment on the three hour flight. 

She sees his back as he boards with business class, but not the front of him until half an hour into the flight. 

Rey’s in the middle seat between Rose and Paige; Paige on the aisle, in consideration of her anxiety, and Rose on the window, in consideration of her desire to see New York from the air. Ben walks nearly the length of the plane before standing by their row and bracing his hands on the overhead baggage compartment. His t-shirt rides up, exposing a half-centimeter slash of pale, furred stomach. 

Ben examines their seating arrangements critically. “Why are you guys back here?” 

“As you can see, these are our assigned seats,” Rey says. “We’re not big people. We didn’t want to spring for extra leg room.”

She doesn’t want to assume they’ll make back their advance within the next week, and even then, the first funds are already allocated to new sound boards and amplifiers. They booked the cheapest seats. 

“You can afford to not sit in steerage,” Ben grumbles. 

Rey gives him a warning look, and his lips compress to a flat line. 

He considers them: Rose is asleep against the window, and Paige has a thick novel in her lap. Rey is doing the crossword in the back of the in-flight magazine with a Super 8 pen. 

“Do you want to come sit up in front with me?” Ben asks after a minute. “We could...talk about the set for CBS.” 

Rey is proud of herself for not making a face. 

“You have an empty seat next to you?” she asks in a neutral tone of voice.

“I could make it empty by sending Hux back here.”

Rey really does laugh, then, and she’s a little startled to hear that it’s not sad or mean or anything else. 

“I’m not sure who wouldn’t survive, but it wouldn’t be everyone,” Rey says, and Ben doesn’t smile but he gets creases around the edges of his eyes. “You’re at the Fairfield hotel too, right? We can talk about the set after we get in.” 

Ben agrees readily enough, making Rey wonder if she’s given up too much ground. 

Poe and Hux have some kind of contentious relationship that is conducted at high volume and maximum theatricality. Nonetheless, there has been no issue in the flow of information between the two, and Rey therefore suspects that Hux is better at his job than Ben has always suggested, if they’re all staying at the same, convenient, hotel. 

“What are you going to play tomorrow?” Paige asks, as soon as Ben is gone. 

Rey snickers. “Oh, I thought I’d make him sing ‘Motion Sickness,’ but switch all the pronouns around. Really rub it in. ‘Why do I sing in an English accent?’ and all that.” 

Paige grins at her. “You bitch,” she says, very affectionately. 

“I was thinking, ‘Your Best American Girl,’” Rey says, after a moment. Luke may not be pleased that they aren’t performing one of their singles, but Rey doesn’t think she has the heart to make Ben actually perform a song whose words suggest that she wouldn’t pee on him to put a fire out. “He can take rhythm, and I’ll just perform vocals. Will look better on video, anyway.” 

Paige’s look is skeptical. “You’re going to make one of the best guitarists of our generation back _me_ up? I’ll take your part. He can take mine.” 

Rey protests, and Paige waves her off. “No, don’t take the piss. I’m in this band because I’m Rosie’s big sister and I already owned the guitar. I wasn’t knocking the socks off the Sunday school class with my playing; I’m failing to impress the national audience.”

Paige’s face is serene and devoid of self-pity, and Rey would be shamed for offering false reassurances. 

“I’ll stay for the rest of the tour,” Paige says softly. “But this is my only one.” 

Rey gulps, wondering what she’s dragged sweet Paige into.

Paige gives her a gentle smile. “Oh no, I don’t hate all of it. It’s not so bad. I’m spending time with you and Rose. And I’m going to New York City! I’m seeing things and places I never dreamed of going to. I just...this isn’t for me. Not long term.” 

Rey swallows around the lump in her throat. 

“It won’t be the same without you,” she says. 

* * *

Any goodwill Poe has acquired by virtue of the smoothness of their travel arrangements evaporates after they arrive at the hotel. Ben and Hux were gone before the rest of them loaded their equipment into two cabs and took a very expensive ride to Midtown Manhattan, and the lobby of the place is empty at 10 at night. Thus, there is nobody else to hear Finn dressing down Poe when they discover that Poe has booked them only two rooms. Queen rooms. Which means, in Manhattan, that there are two queen beds, total, to fit all five members of the band, plus Poe. The desk clerk regretfully informs them that something called “Fleet Week” is taking up many of the hotel rooms in the area. 

Rey is in favor of sending Poe out to fend for himself, but that hardly solves the problem. Finn volunteers to sleep on the floor, which doesn’t seem fair. They are still arguing the sleeping arrangements when the elevator chirps and Ben and Hux emerge into the lobby.

Ben’s eyes light up when he sees her. “Hey,” he says. “We’re going to grab something to eat, do you guys want to come? Or I could bring something for you?”

“We’re still trying to figure out where everyone will sleep,” Rey tells him sourly. “We’ve only got two rooms.”

Ben’s jaw works as he considers that. “They’re very small rooms,” he divulges, unhelpfully.

Rey pinches the bridge of her nose. 

“Okay, let’s get on our mobiles,” she ultimately says. “Poe and I can get rooms in the outer boroughs, if we have to. I’ll get more sleep with the long ride than I will spooning three of you at once.”

“Oh, don’t do that,” Ben interjects. “Hux and I can go stay at my place in Brooklyn. Take our rooms.”

Hux makes a high-pitched noise of objection, but Ben bangs his knuckles against the center of Hux’ skinny chest and the man silences. 

“That’s...really nice of you,” Rose says, in a mix of suspicion and gratitude, and Rey can appreciate both feelings. 

“You’ll be okay with that?” Rey asks. “We have to be there at 4:30 in the morning for soundcheck.” The studio is one street away from their hotel, but Rey vaguely theorizes travel to Brooklyn as involving some kind of bridge away from their current location.

“It’s fine,” Ben says, stooping and unerringly grabbing one of Rey’s guitars from the stack of equipment surrounding the crowd. “No traffic that early. Let me just get my stuff from my room and it’s all yours.” 

She’d look ungrateful if she argued against it. 

Everyone’s shoulders slump in relief when Rey agrees, even if it means that Poe now gets a room to himself, because Rose volunteers to share with Finn. Rey shoots Finn a look, but he won’t meet her eye. 

She soon finds herself in an elevator up to the tenth floor with Ben, wondering when she’d opened the door to this. If she could have predicted, when she agreed to the tour, that she’d be alone in this confined space with Ben, smelling the woodsy scent of his cologne and admiring the fine stitching on his black peacoat. Ben always did believe in buying things to last. 

“What are we going to play tomorrow?” he asks after the quiet begins to drag. 

Rey rubs the back of her neck. “I was thinking ‘Best American Girl,’ with you on lead guitar. Do you know that one?”

She’s unsurprised when he nods. “Are you sure? I don’t mind playing ‘Night Shift.’ It’s got a good solo in it.” 

Rey shifts her feet, staring at the buttons of the elevator. “I felt a little…” Her voice trails off.

Ben gives a short, hard laugh. “Jesus, I don’t care at this point. Go ahead, roast me. It can hardly get more awkward than it’s been.” 

Rey is saved from having to reply by the ding of the elevator, opening to their floor. 

Ben pulls the keycard out of a pocket in his coat and lets them into a room that, like he said, is barely large enough to contain the white bed in the center, a long console table full of entertainment equipment, and Ben’s black rolling luggage. 

“Let me just grab my shaving kit,” he mutters, and ducks into the bathroom. 

Rey puts down her guitar and perches on the console, for lack of a chair and for fear of the bed. She should really eat an energy bar and go to sleep as soon as Ben leaves; they have soundcheck in less than eight hours. But she feels wired on her first night in New York City--wouldn’t that be a waste? Maybe she’ll call Paige or Jannah to go out and wander around. 

“Thanks again,” Rey calls to the bathroom, though she’s not sure she remembered to thank him the first time. “This would have been rather cozy for me and all three other ladies.”

Ben steps out, holding his little flannel kit, and grins at her. “I’m getting a mental image. Tell me, are there a lot of pillow fights on this tour?”

Rey makes a disgusted noise and props herself back on her hands.“God, your fantasy life hasn’t changed at all, has it? You still never manage that threesome?” 

“I’m afraid unlimited women probably sounds more fun than it would be in reality,” Ben sighs, unzipping his luggage to put his things away. “I’d hate to kill the dream.” 

“You’re telling me,” Rey agrees. “I wish I could get interested in pussy. Life would be easier. The only quality people I know are the women in my band. Men are trash.” 

Ben smiles at her crookedly. “I’m hardly going to argue the point with you, but has touring really been so bad?” 

“Only as concerns my sex life,” Rey says sourly. She’s not entirely sure why she’s telling Ben this, except that he’s really the only person she could possibly be honest about it with. 

“Aw, sweetheart, are you feeling a little hard up?” Ben responds, face spreading into a wolfish grin. 

Rey realizes that she has gone awry somewhere; she’s gone beyond commiserating about the travails of touring with Ben, and now she has backed herself into a corner where she has no choice but to flirt with Ben or look like a coward.

She’s not a coward. 

“I own better sex toys now,” she tells him cooly. “I think I’ll survive.” 

“Hmmm,” Ben says, walking closer to her. He puts his fingers on the edge of the console, bracketing her. “Well, if you ever need any help, all you have to do is ask.” The breathless quality of his voice leaves little doubt as to what kind of help is on offer.

He’s leaning very close to her; she can see the expansion and contraction of his pupils as he meets her eyes. The small pink movement of his tongue as it wets his lips.

And here is the thing: there is a hook in this. There is pain to come, there is the downside, there is the crash. Rey’s just sure of it. She knows it.

She knows it. 

That’s why she does it--unlike with any other man in the world, she knows exactly how and why Ben will hurt her. In a certain sense, it’s prepaid. There’s no lurch of worry or fear. She knows how this ends, and she can measure that cost. She _is_ lonely. She _is_ tired. She _does_ long for Ben, who always pretends to know exactly what he’s doing, to have a plan, to have all the answers. She knows that Ben is willing and talented, and will pretend that this will all end well, and in the moment, it's a comfort she wants to wrap herself in like clean sheets warm from the dryer. 

So she leans back, knowing that the buttons on her shirt will tighten nearly to bursting, and she tells Ben that she would rather die than _ask_ him for anything. 

And he understands her meaning perfectly well after a moment to process it--he leans forward on a halted breath and buries his face against the side of her jaw. Rey tilts her head back and closes her eyes as Ben’s big, strong hands land on her body, gathering her to him, then pressing her closer.

He’s not gentle about it; not when he kisses her, not when he pulls the buttons on her blouse apart, and not when he jerks her bra down so that he can wrap his lips and teeth around a nipple. 

Rey stifles a curse when his calloused fingers pinch the other breast, because she feels like it will only encourage him. She hasn’t even managed to master the wave of arousal that runs through her from his mouth on her breasts before he scoops her up and spins her to toss her onto the bed. 

She bounces once, not quite getting her bearings before Ben brings his own body down on top of hers, rubbing his denim-clad hips against her as he presses his tongue into her mouth. 

She thinks about biting him, but the way he pins her down and grabs for her wrists when she tries to dig her nails into his shoulders isn’t really objectionable. And the swell of his cock against her stomach is flattering, when she thinks about it--which she does. She hasn’t even _done_ anything, at this point, and he’s as hard as he’s ever been. 

Ben shimmies down her body, dispensing with her leggings, and she mentally prepares herself for the five-minute Ben Solo special. Ben thinks of sex, as best she could ever tell, as a necessary input, like food or sleep. She assumes she’s about to get off in short order--and that Ben will thereafter be asking her for favors, musical or otherwise, before she’s got her knickers back on. 

But this time, when he gets her naked and arrayed to his liking on the bed--her legs dangling to the floor, himself kneeling below--he pauses. He waits, long enough for her to prop herself on her elbows and look down to see what the hold-up is, before he presses a kiss to the inside of her knee. 

She wonders if he has to work himself up to it, or something, but then he kisses the opposite thigh, and she realizes that she is to be subjected to Ben Solo attempting to be romantic. He works his way up, licking and nibbling, and she’d claw him if she could reach more than the top of his head. She calls him some very uncomplimentary names, of which he takes no notice, since he can discern the way her legs are trembling long before he reaches the apex of her thighs. 

She’s disappointed in herself for the moan she lets out when he finally licks along her cunt. He props one of her thighs over his shoulder and leans in, thrusting his tongue inside her before swirling it around her clit. It’s far too slow to do anything but wind her further up, and she groans in despair when he repeats the sequence. He runs a hand soothingly along the outside of her thigh, then kisses her pussy with closed, affectionate lips. Then licks her slowly, maddeningly so, another time. 

“Jesus, Ben, who have you been fucking?” Rey finally groans when his tongue swirls around her clit with practiced strokes. “I’m not sure whether to send them hate mail or ask for their number.” 

He laughs softly against her body, the warm puff of air making her cunt clench in response. 

He pulls her body further past the edge of the bed so that she’s supporting her weight on her shoulders, and her hips hang open, suspended on his shoulder. At the same moment that his lips finally close around her clit, his thumb brushes against her arse. 

He never did fuck her there. She can’t say the odds of that ever happening are very good, but she supposes that they’re improving the longer he licks her pussy. And while she doesn’t have a great sense of time, it’s been a lot longer than five minutes before he finally quickens his pace. The moments have slid by like honey from the comb, and Ben seems blissfully unaware of any hurry. 

There’s no real reason to hold back or pretend she has manners at this point, so she begins to rock against his face and mumble encouragement. Ben’s fingers dig into her hips, hard enough to bruise, as his tongue works her. 

When she comes, it’s with a gush against his face and an avalanche of sensations ricocheting up her spine. It’s too much. She wants him to immediately let go and sit at least six feet away from her while she recovers from the surge of warm and happy feelings that swirl through her breast.

As it is, he just sits on his heels, her leg draped over his shoulder, watching her with wide and black eyes. 

He runs that thumb back along the entire crease of her cunt, though. Touches her arse again, like a shopper perusing the wares. 

“Think you can come again?” he asks.

She can’t if she hopes to be sparkling on camera at four-thirty the next morning. 

“Maybe,” she says, not to make promises she can’t keep. “Do you have a condom?”

Ben’s eyes round, and he jerks a hand towards his rear pocket, moving out of muscle memory. 

“No,” he says without taking his wallet out. 

It’s more disappointing than she’d actually admit. “Oh, too bad,” she says, trying to be flippant. 

Ben leans his face against her thigh. “Didn’t you ever get...you know, on birth control?” He stutters a little bit as he says it, his cheeks pinkening in a way that is out of place on a man whose chin is still wet from eating her out. 

Rey does, in fact, have three and a half more years of protection implanted in her upper arm, but that’s none of his business. It’s not really the issue. 

Instead, she tells him that his dick likely has more germs than the handrails in the London Underground, and it is going nowhere near any of her orifices. 

His brow creases in further disappointment. “I got a physical like three months ago. I’m totally clean.” 

“Three months is like seven orgies in rock star years,” Rey retorts. “Surely you don’t expect me to believe you’ve been living like a monk for the past five years?” 

She doesn’t understand his request--Ben never expressed any hesitation towards wrapping it up before. She’d never even had to ask. 

“You don’t have to believe that, goddamn it, just believe me when I say I haven’t been with anyone since I...look, I haven’t.” His hand tightens on her leg, and she finally pulls away and sits up, moving her body out of his grasp. 

“We didn’t have to have this particular argument before,” she reminds him. 

“Yeah, well, five years ago you were eighteen years old and a virgin and I didn’t exactly feel great about myself for fucking you in the first place,” he says, with more bitterness than she expected. 

“Right, well, good to see you’re still making all good choices,” she says, stung. 

He runs a hand through his hair in agitation, forgetting that it’s still sticky with Rey. 

“Jesus, I didn’t mean it that way,” he says. “I’m not sorry about it. God knows I’ve got enough to feel shitty about without thinking I did that the wrong way too. I’ll go buy the fucking condoms at the Duane Reade.” 

Rey grimaces. “It’s late, Ben. Maybe we’re already making bad decisions.” 

He shoots her an incredulous look--and she guesses that ushering him out the door is not a great look on her part, not when she’s naked and feeling satisfied and sleepy, and his pants are still ridiculously tented around his unaddressed erection. 

“Would you like a firm yet grateful handjob?” Rey asks, nodding at his lap. 

He shoots her a look that combines equal parts outrage and lust. 

“Well,” Rey says, licking her lips, when she sees that he doubts her sincerity. “Do you?” 

He does, ultimately, even if he takes off all his clothes for it, and he flicks two fingers through the mess between her legs to slick his shaft down, and then closes her hand over his own. 

This, at least, he doesn’t try to make pretty. It’s not; it’s him kneeling over her, straddling her, and jerking off with his cock too near her face. 

“You used to treat me like I was made of glass,” she whispers as his fingers pinch hers painfully. She stares at them while he strokes himself roughly with her hand.

“Yeah, well, I was trying to do right by you,” he snarls. “If you’d prefer me to pull your hair and call you names, I’m just as happy to do that.” 

Rey sucks in a shocked breath and sees him flinch a little at what he said. 

They’re silent, then, save for the slap of flesh on flesh, until he rasps, “let me come on your tits.” 

Rey’s tired, but her cunt clenches at the desperation in his voice. She can’t resist, though, asking him if it’s a request or an instruction.

“Let me come on your tits, _please_ _,”_ he grates out, and Rey has no sooner nodded than he’s painting her chest with it. He makes an angry, broken noise and collapses to his side, facing her. 

His shoulders are heaving, and she’s very afraid that he’s going to cry. Or worse, that she will. 

He wipes one palm through the mess he made on her, then leaves it there, feeling her heart pound in her chest. His expression opens up as they lie there and pant. Softens, until his wide-eyed, vulnerable expression feels like the mirror to her own. 

She should say something. She thinks about saying something. She feels like maybe he’ll be honest with her now, if she asks him. Maybe it would help to hear him explain it, even if he’s not sorry, even if he never apologizes. 

As she opens her mouth, though, she hears the buzz of his mobile as it rings. It’s dinnertime on the West Coast still, surely he doesn’t need to…

But he bends off the bed and grabs for his trousers, fishing his mobile out with his clean hand. Rey can see the name on the screen, and all newly engendered soft feelings for Ben flee as he presses the answer button and sits up on the edge of the bed. 

“You are _not_ taking a call from Alistair Snoke right now,” Rey hisses. 

His face wrinkles apologetically, and he covers the microphone only long enough to respond, “I don’t _want_ to, I have to.” 

When he stands, still naked, from her bed, mobile pressed to his ear, Rey grabs at the rest of his clothing and walks, equally naked, to the door. Heedless of anyone who might be passing by, Rey opens it to hurl his clothes as far as she can down the hall. She bends and does the same with his luggage. It crashes against the wall, some feet down the hall.

Ben doesn’t even have his trousers all the way done up, but he doesn’t argue as he leaves through the door she holds open. 

He doesn’t say a single word to her as he goes. 

* * *

**_Then_ **

“Shall we go out and do something?” Rey asks, draping her arms around Ben’s neck as he sits at the piano and kissing him hello on the side of his jaw.

Over the past two weeks, they’ve spent Rey’s every free hour--and a few she couldn’t really spare--holed up in Ben’s cottage, documenting and rewriting and elaborating on every song Rey’s ever written. Ben’s been so encouraging about it, although also a bit single-minded. They even missed karaoke night, much to Paige’s dismay (primarily because it left her alone with Rose and Finn, who were up to snogging in public, as though they couldn’t remember their terrible breakup in fifth form).

Rey doesn’t typically have the cash to do much for fun, but with Ben feeding her every night and most mornings, she’s afloat enough to pay their way at the cinema or have a drink at the pub. 

Ben has one pencil between his teeth and another between his fingers as he scribbles onto the musical notations in front of him. “Hmmm?” he says, and Rey tries not to feel rejected. 

“We could see a film?” Rey tries again. 

Ben doesn’t directly answer, but he hooks a hand around her waist and pulls her in next to him. When her hip is flush against his, he presses a brief kiss on her lips and then taps the paper on the stand. 

“What do you think of this?” he asks, as though she hadn’t spoken. 

Rey sighs and squints at it. It’s the lead guitar part for Rey’s moody keyboard piece about her time in care, which Ben is determined to adapt into some kind of traditional rock anthem.

“I can’t hear it in my head,” she confesses. “You’ll have to play it.” She doesn’t understand Ben’s decision to transpose the melodic line to the guitar, when she’s months away from being able to handle something of that difficulty even if she does keep practicing after he leaves, which she somehow doubts. 

He nods and pulls another sheet from behind it. “What about the vocal line?”

Rey was shocked to learn that many artists composed the vocal line without writing the lyrics--and that many of them didn’t even write their own lyrics. The lyrics were the whole point of the song, weren’t they? They told you what the song was about. It seemed rather bloodless to sit down and arrange a melody without any sort of inspiration at all. 

Rey exhales heavily, but Ben hardly seems to notice. She rolls her eyes. She has an idea of how to change the subject of his attention. 

So Rey slithers down between the piano and the bench, pushing back against it as she goes.

“What are you doing?” Ben finally asks, even though there are few things she could realistically be up to when she wiggles between his knees. 

“Polishing your shoes,” she tells him, voice dripping in sarcasm. She reaches for his belt buckle, but Ben catches her hand before she lays a hand on it. He scoots back from the piano with a creak of furniture across the linoleum, then pulls her back up, one hand protecting her head from the lip of the instrument.

“Jesus, Rey, you do enough for me already,” he says, picking her up and pulling her into his lap. “You don’t need to suck my cock too.” 

“I don’t mind,” Rey says sulkily. “I’m _bored_.” She realizes that she sounds like a brat, but she doesn’t quite care. She’s never met a man who’d rather do _anything_ more than be sucked off, and she’s not sure whether it says more about Ben’s priorities or her own presumed skill in swallowing his knob. 

Ben wraps his arms around her, tucking her chin against his chest. 

“I know I’ve been working a lot,” he says in a soothing tone of voice. “But we’re close to having enough material for a demo.” 

Rey wrinkles her nose. “What?” she says. “Why would you make a demo of my songs?”

He’s quiet for a minute. “I think it’s really good stuff, Rey. I think we sound good together. I want to try to sell this album.” 

Rey’s heart stutters a bit in her chest as she parses that. 

“Just because you haven’t been feeling your own work? Ben, the point of you being here is for you to have a holiday, right? You need a proper holiday! Not just the Who in London, but let’s go out, let’s go by the Sunflower Lounge, let’s...let’s go to the zoo and do shit like that…” She’s trembling a bit. She’s not sure of the exact date of his departure. But she’d rather have happy memories of him than a CD of her sad songs, even if they have been rendered beautiful under Ben’s hand. 

Ben’s arms tighten around her. “No, I mean, yes, I want to do all that with you, and it’s not shit, Rey, I want to do all of that, take you the zoo and London and wherever the fuck else you want to go, I just...I’ve only got so much time, now, and I’ve got to make it count if we’re going to pull this off.”

“I don’t understand,” Rey says in a small voice. 

“Rey, sweetheart, this is how I get to keep you, you see?” Ben says on a short breath. “I don’t know how to do anything else, but I’m off of contract, and if I can sell this album--Rey, wouldn’t you like to sing? Put together a group--and I know some guys, studio musicians who’d still tour if they liked the music--try a new concept?”

Rey’s head is spinning.

“Ben, I’m a mechanic,” she says, sounding watery. “My gran taught me to play piano. I’m not...I’m not like you.”

“That’s not true,” Ben says, very fiercely. “You’re _just_ like me. Just because nobody shoved a ukelele in your hand when you were three and kept you home from school doesn’t mean this isn’t what you’re meant for.” 

“You don’t have to do this, Ben,” Rey protests, feeling like her heart is going to break out of her chest. “I always knew you were going to go. Don’t...fuck up your career, or, whatever, for me.”

“I’m not! Do you think I don’t mean it?”

He rubs his cheek against the top of her head. “Or is it that you don’t want to come?” 

She can’t see his face from where she’s tucked under his chin, but his lovely voice is very tight. 

She swallows against the tears. “Of course I do,” she says, even though her own voice is jerking up and down against her will. “Of course I want to go with you.” _I love you_ , she thinks. “I love singing with you. I just don’t know...I don’t know how any of it works.” _Don’t promise me this and take it away_ , she thinks. “I don’t know how to sell an album.” 

Ben kisses her temple, tips her head back, kisses her lips. He’s smiling again, even though her eyes have welled over, and she knows that always makes her go splotchy. 

“It’s just like putting together a song,” he says, confidently. “You think about how you want the audience to feel. How you want them to react. I’ve worked with these guys for years now, I know what they want to hear.”

He taps the music.

“Play the piano line,” he tells her, then dislodges her from his lap. 

He grabs his Stratocaster off the stand and plugs it into one of the soundboards. She hasn’t seen him do anything with the electric equipment yet, and she’s startled when he plays the five-note right hand flourish of her piano arrangement as a kind of musical snarl. 

“And you can’t make it too pretty, or they won’t believe it. It doesn’t feel right. My mother used to call it ‘an imaginary garden with real toads in it.’ You have to dirty it up, or it doesn’t feel authentic. That’s the brand.” 

“Doesn’t it matter whether it _is_ authentic?” Rey asks. “How much of yourself you put in the song?” 

Ben shakes his head. “Don’t think of it as putting yourself out there--they’ll eat you alive if you do that. You’re performing. You’re playing a character. Worry about the audience, not yourself. Nobody knows what you feel--keep it that way. Think about what you _want_ them to think you feel.” 

Rey frowns. “But in that solo record you put out, you didn’t mean what you sang…?” 

Ben shakes his head. “It doesn’t matter. It only matters if when you heard it, you were inspired.” Ben’ lips quirk as he plucks out a lyric from the song. “I can’t explain it any other way,” he croons, even as he repeats the snarl of the lead guitar piece. 

“Sing it with me,” he orders her. 

Rey laughs. “I’m sure the neighbors can already hear you.” 

“Lucky them!” Ben yells, singing it louder. “I can’t explain it any other way.” 

Rey reluctantly sings with him. “I can’t explain it any other way.” 

Ben’s nearly shouting now. “I can’t explain it any other way!” He’s got vocal training--he projects from his diaphragm. Rey will have to watch some lessons on YouTube if she’s got any hope of keeping up with him. 

The remaining keyboard line is simple and repetitive, and she can turn her head to watch him as he moves into the guitar solo, flipping his black hair out of face and pulling his arms close to his chest as he plays on the lower end of the neck. He’s untouchably beautiful when he’s performing, unaware like this. 

“Imagine thirty thousand people are watching us play this, Rey,” he tells her when he’s done, chest heaving. “Can you imagine it?”

She can’t, honestly. All she can see is him. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Leia's "friend Gayle" is of course Gayle King, Oprah's bestie. 
> 
> Did you know that Elton John doesn't write any of his lyrics?? I was shocked!
> 
> Rey and Ben are working on 'The System Only Dreams in Total Darkness' by the National- the lyrics to that one are pretty inscrutable, but the UK foster care system is as good a guess as anything.


	12. Who Are You

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Please excuse the chapter count ticking up by one. This chapter got to 5200 words, and they weren't even at the Guavian Death Gang party.

**_Now_ **

Even though hair and makeup are done with him, Ben still looks like hell. His hair is nice, actually, fluffy and combed and blown-back. But a thick layer of pancake and some color correction can’t hide the puffiness under his eyes or the way the right side of his jaw is swelling up.

Rey doesn’t think she’s looking her best on four hours of sleep, but for once she feels prettier than Ben. 

Rey sneaks a look at his knuckles--no injuries that she can tell--before asking how the other guy looks. Ben blinks a moment or two too long before responding to her, and maybe he’s surprised that she’s acknowledging him, or maybe he’s on something, she can’t tell.

“I let him get in a free shot,” he says, and his voice is a little raspy. Of course, it’s five-thirty in the morning, none of them are in their best shape.

“Who?”

“Hux. I fired him.” 

Now it’s Rey’s turn to blink in surprise, because she thinks Hux has been Ben’s manager for...eight? Maybe nine years?

“Why?” Rey asks.

Ben finally turns his whole body to look at her, frowning like he’s solving a puzzle.

They’re waiting for the lighting technicians to finish with the stage before they can go on to test sound.

Rey had been halfway prepared for Ben not to show up at all; she wouldn’t really have blamed him. She blames herself, most of all. What else did she expect out of Ben? He was the exact same person she remembered. How many times did she need to touch fire before learning that it was hot?

“He dimed me out to Snoke as soon as I told him he had to sleep on my futon,” he says. “I can’t keep working with someone like that.” 

“I--what? What did he tell Snoke?”

Ben jerks his head to indicate the set.

Rey makes an incredulous noise in the back of her nose. “You didn’t think your label was going to notice you on national broadcast?” 

“I didn’t think my label was going to notice until it was already done,” Ben mutters. “And then I could point out that it wasn’t a Knights of Ren promotion, and I could have told them to shove it.” 

As if Ben’s ever told Empire Records to ‘shove it’ in 17 years. 

“Are you, ah, good to play still?” Rey asks. 

Ben narrows his eyes at her. “Yeah, why wouldn’t I be?”

Oh, because she threw him naked out of his own hotel room eight hours ago, because he’s just fired his manager, because he’s in a fight with his label, and because he looks like he might be coming down off of something? Of course not. Ben Solo could play guitar with a sucking chest wound, he’d tell her. 

He seems to take some of her meaning. “I’m not...I’m sober.”

Rey’s cheek muscle twitches at the hesitancy of that statement. 

“I’m almost three years sober,” he amends, reluctantly. 

“Oh. I mean, good for you,” she says quietly. That hadn’t really been the problem, but it sure hadn’t helped there at the end. She _is_ happy for him about that. 

Ben looks away, squinting as they flood the stage with white light. “I’m just..I’m not doing great. With this.” 

Rey bites her tongue to keep any potentially clever remark in. 

Rey can hear the other members of her band trickling in from the kitchen, buoyed with coffee and bagels for their performance. They’ll play together first so that everyone else can be excused to roam New York for a few hours, and then Ben and Rey will do photography and then, finally, interviews. 

“Do you think I should quit?” Ben asks, peering intently at her with his red-rimmed eyes.

“Quit...the tour?” Rey asks, rocking back on her heels. It would be disastrous for her band. Wouldn’t it? Would the Knights of Ren try to replace Ben? Would any of the venues take just her? Would…

“Music,” he says. Then he grimaces. “I guess I couldn’t, I’d still need to do something, I guess, teach, or do studio work. Fuck. Do you think I should?”

Rey can’t do anything but gape at him. He left her naked with his spunk literally wet on her tits so that he could take a call from his label, not to mention how he ruined their lives five years before at Snoke’s behest, and he wants her opinion now? He’s never in his life asked her what she thinks he ought to do. 

“I think...you should probably take a shower and a rest and think about whether you want to ask me that,” she manages. 

He holds her eyes as if willing her to answer until his jaw hardens and he’s the first one to glance away.

Rose and Jannah pass by them, winding microphone cables around their backs and looking at them curiously.

She can hear Ben’s teeth grating. 

“Ben,” Rey says impulsively, laying a hand on his wrist. He jerks as though he’s been burned, but then moves it cautiously back beneath her fingers. “I get that you’re trying to make it up to me. And I don’t know if you ever can. But I think...I think I’d miss hearing you play, if you quit.” 

His eyes widen, searching her face.

“Everybody would,” she amends. 

It’s the best she can offer him. 

Ben goes still at that, but she can hear his footsteps behind her as she walks on the stage.

* * *

_You're an all-American boy_

_I guess I couldn't help trying to be_

_Your best American girl_

It’s a good set, even if Rey doesn’t know what to do with her hands when she doesn’t have a guitar in them and Paige is a little uncertain playing Rey’s part. Ben, of course, is flawless, even if Rey’s sure he’s never played ‘American Girl’ before. 

_You're the one_

_You're all I ever wanted_

_I think I'll regret this_

Ben usually plays a two-hour set with the Knights of Ren, and he does vocals on every song, but he only picks up a guitar for a couple of numbers. It’s him on lead guitar in the albums--Rey’s scrutinized the liner notes--but most of the lead tracks are too involved for him to play and sing at the same time in concert. He’s got a big silent type named Vicrul who plays lead on tour, which is a shame, because Rey and everyone else in the world likes Ben best on guitar, face screwed up in concentration, lips pinned together, big hands sliding up and down the neck to make the instrument wail and squeal. He hams it up today, adding effects Paige has never mastered, until the guitar almost sounds like a second human voice backing Rey up. Interns and management types come out of their cubicles to watch and clap when they’re done. 

He leaves the stage in the opposite direction from the rest of them, afterwards. 

Like the other guests with suspected potty-mouths, Ben and Rey will have pre-taped interviews with Gayle King and Anthony Mason, who looks a little bit appalled with himself as he attempts to prompt Rey to talk about her sex life. 

She’s read his biography--he covered the August Coup from Moscow. Now he asks her what she means when she sings that she “faked it every time” in ‘Motion Sickness.’

“Oh, I’m sure you wouldn’t know, Anthony,” she murmurs, to the delight of everyone on set, and he blushes prettily. 

In truth, he’s not nearly as good as Jyn Erso at ferreting out her secrets, or perhaps his heart isn’t in it, and Rey manages to talk a lot more about her music than she suspects his producers really wanted. 

What’s it like playing again with Ben? Oh, it’s grand, he’s a talented musician, she’s having a grand time on tour meeting so many new people and spending time with the fans. What’s it like being on stage with him, singing these very personal songs? It’s just grand, all the hard work they put into their album is really paying off. 

She gives them nothing. 

By the time she’s done, everyone else but Ben and Finn are gone; Jannah and Poe are going over travel arrangements for the rest of the tour at Jannah’s insistence, and Rose and Paige are going to Central Park and the dinosaur museum. 

Finn volunteered to stay behind and wait for Rey, and Ben’s got the final interview. Gayle and Anthony tried talking to them together, but the amount of awkwardness that setup engendered led to its suspension after fewer than five minutes of blank stares and dangling questions. 

Rey and Finn huddle on the edge of the set, watching as Ben slumps into the folding chair set up opposite Gayle, who is relaxed and authoritative in her bright yellow shift, legs crossed and fingers clasped over her knee. 

Gayle radiates the same kind of feminine authority as Leia Skywalker, and Ben unconsciously reacts to it, straightening up and focusing. 

“Why are we still here?” Finn whispers. 

“I want to see what he says,” Rey whispers back. As best she knows, this is the first interview Ben’s done since she’s been anyone of consequence. 

Finn squints at her, and Rey pretends to innocence.

“Rey…” he says in a warning tone. Then seems to catch himself. “You know what, none of my business.” 

“Oh, don’t be mature,” Rey grumps at him. “Then I can’t yell at you for getting back together with Rose again.”

“It’s going to be different this time.” 

Rey looks at him skeptically, and he rubs his jaw. “No, really. I mean, it could be.”

“I guess it’s possible you could act less like a fuckboy if you really wanted to,” Rey agrees. She may love him like a brother, but she might love Rose more. It’s difficult every time. 

Finn doesn’t even object to the characterization. “Things are different now,” he repeats.

“How’s that?”

“I mean, Rose...she’s the real deal, you know? She always had her shit together, even when she was working as a doorman. She had plans, and she’s brilliant, and...I never thought I had anything to offer.”

Rey gives him a level look at this load of bullshit, and he holds his hands up apologetically.

“Look, I didn’t think I could handle a serious relationship when working at Papa’s newsagent’s shop was the biggest thing in my future, alright? My prospects are a little better now.”

“That’s pretty unreconstructed,” Rey points out, and he winces again. 

“I can’t help my daft lizard brain,” he protests. 

“Nah, you can’t,” Rey agrees, and hugs him around his shoulders. If he hurts Rose again, she’ll still have to help Rose hide his body out of solidarity, but she devoutly hopes that this time he can manage not to frack it up. 

They turn back towards the stage as Gayle finishes buttering Ben up with the softball questions about his most recent album and starts putting the screws to him.

“So, tell me about how you met Rey,” Gayle asks him.

“She fixed my car, actually,” Ben says, attempting a smile. “I didn’t find out she was a musician until later.”

Which is a generous way to put it, Rey thinks.

“That’s right, she worked as a mechanic until recently. So, you two were together?”

Ben hesitates, but Gayle flashes that Facebook picture of them snogging outside the Azure Arms up on the monitor to Ben’s left, and Ben’s not daft enough to lie to the woman who broke R. Kelly down while there’s documentary evidence of him hoisting Rey up against a wall. 

“We were.” 

“But not anymore.”

Ben’s eyes flick off-stage, as though he can telepathically confer with Rey about his answers. It’s what they could have done, should have done yesterday, if she hadn’t been too goddamn horny and he hadn’t been so utterly gormless. 

“No,” he says softly. “Not for a long time.” 

“Hmmm, she dumped you then?” Gayle says, and while her tone is gentle, Rey has a sudden appreciation for the killer instinct telling the journalist to poke the dissipated rock star for messing around with the wide-eyed teenager Rey presumably had been. 

“Yeah, actually,” Ben says, his mouth twisting. “She dumped me pretty hard.”

Gayle gives a slightly disbelieving huff. “And yet, here you are, on tour. Has that been hard on you?” 

Here, Ben is on firmer footing. “Not really. Rey’s band is incredibly professional, and so is she. She’s been easy to work with, and great to perform with.” 

“What did you think when you first heard her album?” Gayle asks, switching tacts. 

“I thought, ‘she’s going to be famous.’”

“Oh, was this before or after your uncle picked it up?”

“Before. I saw it on YouTube. Luke and I...we actually talked about it.”

“Really? I thought the two of you had a falling out.” This isn’t the scoop Gayle wants, but she’ll follow it if she can. It’s all news to Rey as well--even if she’d had a nagging suspicion that Luke didn’t spend his evenings trawling YouTube for undiscovered talent. 

“It was the first time in...a long time,” Ben says. “I let things go on too long. I should have reached out to him right after I met her.”

“Why didn’t you?” Gayle asks curiously. 

“Just dumb pride, I guess. Rey was always the kind of musician he would have wanted to sign. Voice like an angel, great sense of composition.”

Finn makes derogatory kissy noises here, and Rey gives him a sharp elbow to his ribcage. 

“So she already composing when you two met? Did you play together?” Gayle asks, her eyebrows lifting.

Ben freezes, as though realizing the trap he’s walked into. 

“We did, yes. There was a lot of karaoke,” he temporizes.

 _You went twice, Ben_ , Rey thinks.

Gayle laughs. “I’d love to hear those recordings.” 

Ben takes a deep breath and looks off the stage again, and for a moment Rey’s heart thuds faster, because she’s suddenly certain that Ben is about to fall on a hand grenade on her behalf. 

_Not in the middle of the tour_ , she thinks at him. _Not now, when it won’t even help_. 

The moment passes. Ben manages a weak laugh. “Well, come see the tour. You might even see us on stage again together, if I can talk her into it. We’ll perform some covers.”

Gayle’s softening a bit towards Ben, but not enough to let him off the hook. “So, the album. It’s some pretty emotional stuff, isn’t it? The lyrics?”

Ben only nods, still looking queasy and hungover, even if he isn’t. 

“And did you think it was about you?”

Ben squirms in his chair, looking younger than his 35 years. “You’d have to ask her about that.”

“Well, I’m asking what you thought, when you heard it,” Gayle says, digging in with a ‘no-bullshit’ look. 

Ben sucks on his teeth. “Yeah. I mean, I assumed it was. I hope it was.”

“You hope so? That’s an interesting answer. I mean, if it is about you, you sound like the worst boyfriend ever.”

“Better me than some other asshole. Excuse me. Better me than some other guy.”

Gayle laughs. “Why is that?” 

“Because I...at least, I can maybe do something about it.”

“This tour? Where she’s opening for the Knights of Ren?”

Ben shakes his head. “No, she would have found something like that anyway. Make it up to her as a person.” 

Rey hears one of the women working the camera setup sigh. 

_Oh come on_ , she thinks. _You’re going to let him off that easily? Didn’t you hear what I sang about him?_

How can she just let it go?

“Is there anything you’d like to say to her?” Gayle asks, and it’s a reality TV producer’s trick, but one Ben seems prepared for.

“Well, I’m not great with words,” he says, straightening and turning on the charm for the first time in the interview. He’s been lost in his head, likely too tired to think straight, but he’s been in this business for a long time, and he knows he’s got to stick the landing on this interview if he doesn’t want to look like a complete sad sack in the next day’s media cycle. He can turn it on and off when he wants to. The same star quality that makes people stare at him even though his nose is objectively too large and his jaw is objectively crooked. 

“Better with music?” Gayle asks. “We can get you a guitar.”

“Okay,” Ben says. “I can play something.”

Rey covers her face in embarrassment as an intern quickly fetches him an acoustic guitar from off the stage. Some of the producers are beginning to look at her. 

“Do you take requests?” Gayle jokes.

“Sure,” he agrees readily. “Anything for a fan.”

“Hmmm, why don’t you play something for our guest, then? Something you’d want to say to her?”

Ben smiles easily, checks the tuning on the guitar, and brushes his hand over the strings in contemplation. Then he launches into one of the most recognizable riffs in modern music, plucking it fingerstyle on an unfamiliar guitar, rhythm and melody at the same time:

_What'll you do when you get lonely_

_And nobody's waiting by your side?_

_You've been running and hiding much too long_

_You know it's just your foolish pride_

His expression turns the lyrics introspective--not Clapton’s peevish lament that his best friend’s wife won’t sleep with him, but an accusation directed at himself. 

Ben lifts his head and looks away, then, and even though Rey’s positive he can’t see her past the glare of the set lighting, she knows he’s searching for her. His fingers hammer on the ringing melody.

_Layla, you've got me on my knees_

_Layla, I'm begging, darling please_

_Layla, darling won't you ease my worried mind?_

“What’s he doing?” Rey whispers, and Finn laughs. 

“I think he’s... _wooing_ you, you might say.” 

“Well, make him stop!” Rey says in a panicked whisper. She’s not a strong enough person to keep this up. She’d always known it would end badly, and she’d tossed her heart and her knickers at this man’s feet days after meeting him. Both times. How is she supposed to handle it?

Finn claps an apologetic hand on her shoulder. “Make him yourself, you coward.”   
  


* * *

**_Then_ **

Ben drives the Citroen into London early on a clear, soft Friday morning. They take their time on the three-hour drive, windows down and the radio on. It’s too early to check into their hotel, so they park the Citroen at an indoor garage in St. John’s Wood, then take the Tube to Hyde Park. It’s a massive festival there; three stages, nearly a dozen bands, tens of thousands of people. 

Rey’s agog for the whole transit; she’s been to London for school trips a few times, but never for pleasure, and never with Ben’s hand in her back pocket as they show their tickets and make their way into the sea of people. 

Ben’s an old hand with the festival scene, and he’s prepared for the vast lawns and dozens of campground-style stalls with their own blanket to lounge on and cash to buy her an overpriced pint and pie. They set out on a free patch of grass and spread out. The Who won’t be on until almost nightfall; they have the entire day to spend together with absolutely nothing more pressing than their own enjoyment. Rey’s taking two days in a row off of work for the first time ever, and she feels very decadent. 

Ben’s been working nearly around the clock, growing tetchy and overtired, but today he’s relaxed and present, and Rey’s heart is correspondingly weightless and easy. Rey rubs sun cream around his Wayfarers to make him wrinkle his nose at her when they lie down together. 

“I like playing festivals,” he tells her. “You play your own set, and if you’re lucky, you spend the next two or three days lazing around, drinking and listening to everyone else.”

“Mmm, sounds grand,” Rey says, pillowing her head on his stomach and squinting up at the lacy clouds. She hasn’t heard of the opening acts, but they’re not bad. She imagines Ben up there, startling all the casual listeners into attention with a guitar solo. 

“I’d like to play Coachella with you,” he says, running a hand over her hair. “You’d look good in one of those flower crowns.” 

Rey laughs at the idea of the two of them on stage a world away. It’s like imagining herself as an astronaut on the moon. 

“You wouldn’t rather have me naked and covered in mud at Burning Man?” she teases. 

“Nah, I’d like to see you up on stage,” he says, flipping her to her back and leaning over her, the tips of his black hair tickling her face. “In those little cut-off shorts that drive me crazy, and everyone else too. But then you’d sing so beautifully I’d forget to stare at your ass.”

She grins up at him. “You’re a sweet-talker.” He kisses her then, heedless of all the people walking around them. Nobody else cares; they’re all just thrilled to be there on an endless summer day, listening to the music. It’s gorgeous out here. She couldn’t ask for better weather. She ties up her t-shirt and lets the sun bake her stomach. 

When they get overheated lying in the sun, they walk around the booths and look at the fair rides. The crowd ranges from teenagers to the original fans of the Who, but the mood is uniformly jovial. 

Ben knows more about the acts than her, and he points out some particulars of their equipment and set, lifting her onto his shoulders at one point so that she can see better. She doesn’t want to block anyone’s view of the stage, but it’s heady being nine feet up in the air with her thighs wrapped around Ben’s head and his hands clasped to her knees. 

When the afternoon drags on and the crowd thickens, Ben hooks a thumb at the grandstand in the middle of the crowd. “You want to go up there? Or try to get closer to the stage?””

“Oh, I think you need special tickets to go up there,” Rey says.

Ben grins and pulls a couple of lanyards out of his back pocket. “Sure,” he agrees.

Rey laughs and makes a delighted sound. “Ben! You spent too much on today. I would have been fine down here with the rest of the proletariat.”

“Nah, someone owed me a favor,” he says, moving her towards the covered structure with his hand on her lower back. He’s in a plain white t-shirt and black jeans, same as most of the crowd. He owns a t-shirt depicting the Who, and it’s ragged enough that it might relate back to an original tour, but he informed her this morning that it was vulgar to wear the band’s shirt to their concert. 

Ben flashes their badges and they’re admitted to a set of finished risers diagonal to the Great Oak Stage. It’s much less crowded, and there are waiters bringing drinks and hors d’oeuvres, as well as a sit-down dining area and a private loo. 

Rey smiles up at Ben; for all she’s worried about him over the past couple of weeks, he looks relaxed and at home here. They find an unoccupied spot, and Rey leans up against his shoulder, twining her fingers with his. They stay there through Paul Weller’s set--Ben knows who he is, Rey’s happy to hear all about it from Ben--and when the Who finally take the stage, shortly before sunset, everyone in the risers moves down into the lowest level to get the best view.

They’re televised up on giant screens around the stage, cut with footage of the band from the sixties and seventies, so even though Roger Daltrey is more of a small, rounded shape in the distance than a proper figure, Rey can still see his gentle, beatific expression as he plays his most famous hits. 

Ben’s a big enough man that the crowd hasn’t pressed them too closely all day long, but as the crowd leans in for ‘Baba O’Riley,’ someone treads on Rey’s foot, making her yelp and jerk against Ben’s side. Ben turns to crush the man with a withering glare, only to lean away from the man’s noise of delighted recognition. It’s a man of about Ben’s age, but with intricate tattoos climbing his neck and his hair up in tight buns on either side of his forehead.

“Oh shit, Kylo Ren! I’m so sorry, I didn’t see you there.” 

Ben mumbles something noncommittal and tries to pull Rey away as her face creases in confusion. She digs in her heels at the same time that the man leans in, reaching back for a companion further in the crowd.

“Duncan, Duncan, hey, come here, Kylo Ren is here. Kylo, you remember me, right? We opened for you guys in 2011 on the European leg. I’m Tad Leech--I play bass, remember?”

The second man turns around and instantly smiles, and Rey recognizes Duncan Kloda, the lead singer of Kanjiklub. She’s sung along to their single before on the radio. 

“Ben?” Rey asks, confused. 

“Ben Solo,” Ben says, sticking his hand out to Duncan, who pumps it enthusiastically. 

“Sure, man, right, you’re not performing with the Knights of Ren anymore?” 

Ben shoots Rey a look that contains a thin layer of calm over panic. 

“Uh, no,” Ben says. “Not for a few months now. Hey, I’m actually here with-” He places a possessive hand on Rey’s upper arm, fingers wrapping a bit too far around it to be mere affection. 

Tad doesn’t take a hint and instead extends his hand. 

“Oh, hey, nice to meet you too. I’m-”

“I’m Rey,” she blurts, head spinning. She knows the Knights of Ren. Their lead singer. She didn’t go wild like some girls did with the posters and the dolls, but she knows their songs, she-

Had there been something in the news about Kylo Ren recently? She needs to get away from Ben, look at her mobile, but he’s now holding onto her upper arm hard enough to bruise, and she realizes she’s pulling against his grip. She looks up at him and he releases her, stress making little white lines appear along his mouth. 

Tad has continued nattering along, reciting the other persons he has encountered during this concert, without taking any additional notice of Rey.

“Guavian Death Gang’s playing the Barclaycard stage today,” Duncan leans in to say. “And their label is hosting a party at an exec’s house after their set. You should come.”

Ben looks between him and Rey. “Oh, you know, we have plans,” he says miserably. 

“No, no, of course your girl’s invited too,” Tad says brightly. “You should come! If you’re not playing with KOR or Empire, you should meet the guys at Universal, yeah?”

Ben hesitates, looking at Rey. She recalls him begging his mother to introduce him to a different label. Fuck, his mother. Wasn’t Kylo Ren’s mother a Skywalker? Maybe even Leia Skywalker?

“Sounds good,” Rey says softly. Ben takes her limp and unresisting fingers and squeezes them as he gets directions from Tad and Duncan. 

* * *

  
The Who close out with ‘Who Are You,’ to a rapturous cheer and an explosion of fireworks. Rey is quiet in the din, even under Ben’s anxious regard, and she lets the stream of the crowd carry her away towards the exits. When Ben sees her feet dragging, he scoops her against his chest despite her squirming. 

“Put me down,” she mutters as he throws elbows and takes advantage of his size to get through the gates and into the dark boulevards around Hyde Park. 

He doesn’t deposit her back on the ground until they’re well away from the crowd, and then he braces, feet spread, like a boxer. 

She turns away and looks down the street. They’re on the opposite side of the park from their Tube line, she thinks, and she’s not sure how to get back to his car. 

“Rey,” he says, pleading.

“What,” she snaps at him.

“Look,” he says again, and stops. He’s nearly vibrating with it. His lips contract, flex. He doesn’t speak again. She supposes he’s leaving it up to her. 

“I can see why you didn’t tell me at first,” she says slowly. “People must...I bet it’s a lot. If you’re going in to get your car fixed.” 

He nods, throat bobbing. 

“So...I get it. Why you didn’t tell me then. But, if you really meant it, everything, and you’re not just taking the piss about trying to sell a demo-”

“I’m not!’ he cries. 

“You didn’t think I needed to know?!” her voice carries, and a few people further down the street crane their heads to look at them. Here she is, rowing with her boyfriend, the rock star, on a street in London. She’s a good girl, a mechanic, she keeps to herself and likes a night at the pub with her mates once a week. 

Ben cheeks flex as he stares down at her, distraught. 

“I told you I was a musician. I really am Ben Solo. That’s my name, that’s what I tried to put an EP out under last year. I didn’t lie to you about anything.” 

Rey sucks in a deep breath, prepared to have it out with him in the middle of South Kensington, but then she stops herself. It’s not like she’s told him everything about her life before they met. The sad, hard parts, not at all. It’s all been piano lessons and her lovely friends. 

Why didn’t she talk about it with him? 

“ _Why_ didn’t you tell me? You must have thought about it.” She glares up at him, even though she can barely see his face in the shadow.

“I liked how you talked to me. I liked _you_. I didn’t want that to change.”

Rey raises her eyebrows. “You think I would have treated you differently if I knew you were proper famous, not just a working musician?”

He rubs his neck; he doesn’t want to say anything that brings it back to her. 

“I didn’t want you to Google me,” he finally says.

“I could have done at any point,” she notes. “Doesn’t the Internet know your stage name?”

“Yeah, but you didn’t.” 

Rey fishes her mobile out of her knapsack, shows it to him. 

“Don’t,” he begs.

“Don’t you want to tell me first, then?” she asks. “What is it, Ben? Are you married? Did you hurt someone? Tear up the Pope’s picture on the telly, and now you’ve got assassins after you? What is it?”

“I...no, none of those things,” he says, putting his hands on her upper arms, trying to pull her closer. 

“Then just tell me first,” she says, exasperated. 

His lower lip is compressed against the upper as he stares at her helplessly. 

“Ben,” she says more softly, lifting a hand up to his cheek. “I believe you won’t lie to me. So just tell me.”

“I can’t,” he says. “Just...just wait until you’re home. Don’t do it while you’re with me. It feels like I was a whole other person before I met you.”

Rey sighs. “Slappers, coke, fighting in public?” 

Ben grimaces. “Pretty much.” 

“So just general rock star shite?” 

“Yeah,” Ben says, rubbing the back of his neck. 

Rey thinks about that. 

“Nothing else?” she prods him.

“All the Skywalker crap,” he reluctantly amends. “My parents, my uncle, my grandfather. That’s not me, though.”

Bloody hell, she’s got Anakin Skywalker’s guitar back in her bedsit behind her flimsy lock. She reels from that for a moment, then focuses on Ben, who is the very picture of misery as he watches her process everything.

“Okay,” she says, at last. 

“Okay, what?” he demands. 

“Okay, fine, let’s go to the party. You’re more famous than I thought and you did some stupid shite where the press could see you. Okay.” She nods, indicating that she is putting it behind them. 

He’s still while he studies her face, trying to gauge whether she means it. Then he yanks her to his chest, wrapping his arms around her until she’s nearly crushed.

“God, I love you,” he croons into her ear. “Rey, I love you so much.” 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So! Gayle King and Anthony Mason are real people who do a lovely entertainment show. Anthony Mason really did cover the August Coup. I'm sure the music beat is easier, though?
> 
> "Layla" was written by Eric Clapton about George Harrison's wife, Patti Boyd. Apparently, everyone involved was pretty cool about it? I like the acoustic version much better than the original Derek & the Dominoes electric set, but I like the YouTube videos of boys with guitars fingerpicking it solo the very best. Is my slip showing here with respect to your author's feelings about boys who play the guitar? 
> 
> The Who concert did happen, and it looks like it was a lot of fun and I really wanted to go. 
> 
> Is anyone else old enough to remember Sinead O'Connor ripping up a picture of the Pope on SNL? I'm not sure she got assassins, exactly, but she did have a lot of death threats.


	13. Sultans of Swing

**_Now_ **

Rey wakes up in St. Louis, only nine hours after the Knights of Ren closed down a sold-out concert at Union Center in Chicago. Rey slept in the van on the way to the Holiday Inn they’re staying at, but she had to wake up to check in, and then go back to sleep in the room she is sharing with Jannah. 

She wakes up because her mobile is buzzing and chirping, skidding across her bedside table as text messages light it up. 

Rey thrashes in the general direction of the device, unable to seize it before it jumps the cliff and lands on the floor. It continues to buzz and chirp there. 

“Whassat,” Jannah grumbles sleepily from the next bed.

“Sorry, sorry,” Rey says, leaning over the edge of the bed, losing her balance, and toppling onto the floor. 

She does, at least, get a hold of the mobile.

All the texts are from Ben.

<Good morning>

<You’re at the Holiday Inn by the convention center right?>

<Can you get breakfast?>

<I’m downstairs>

<At the table in the back>

<By the toaster>

Rey sighs and considers going back to sleep, but then again, she’s already on the floor.

The phone buzz/chirps again.

<Also, I went to the doctor yesterday>

<AGAIN>

Ben then sends a cluster of photographs. Documents, shot with an iPhone against the backdrop of a bus seat. Rey squints at them. Medical records for one Benjamin Solo, at the Reproductive Health Clinic of Greater Chicago, dated the previous day. 

Ben has helpfully underlined the section pronouncing him free of seven different sexually transmitted diseases. Well, bully for him.

“Everything alright?” Jannah asks sleepily.

“Oh sure, Ben just wants to have breakfast,” Rey grumbles. “And maybe also to do it raw.” 

“Mmmm,” Jannah sighs, fluffing her pillow. “Well, if you can manage both down at the buffet, cheers. Don’t bring him up here--I’m still knackered and he looks like he cries during sex.” 

At this accurate assessment of Ben’s proclivities, Rey tells Jannah to go back to sleep, and pulls on some joggers and a relatively clean t-shirt to stagger down into the lobby. 

She has no idea what her hair and makeup situation is, having not stopped in the bathroom for longer than it took to pee, but she supposes that Ben has seen her look worse. 

Ben is, as promised, seated by the toaster, still poking at his mobile. He looks annoyingly well-groomed, with his hair combed back and cheeks shaven. He smiles brightly to see Rey slouch past him in search of strong tea. 

She locates a Twinings packet under a pile of Liptons, drowns it in hot-ish water from the coffee machine, then slumps into the cafe seat opposite Ben. 

He waits until she’s grimaced at her first sip to greet her. 

“You’re in a good mood,” Rey says suspiciously. 

Ben smirks at her. “I slept on the bus, got a shower, and I’ve got a big day planned.”

Ben and ‘planned’ are two words that should send her running in terror, but she covers it in another sip of her watery tea and blusters through it. 

“Out of all the gin joints in all the towns, you’re staying at this Holiday Inn?” Rey asks suspiciously. 

“No, your manager booked all our rooms together.”

“Why did Poe book your rooms?” 

“You’ll recall I fired my manager.”

“You’ll recall I almost fired Poe.” 

“Hmmm, yes,” Ben says, taking a slug of his own drink. He’s been out of the hotel; he has Starbucks. “That’s what I wanted to ask you about, actually. Can I buy you breakfast?”

“It comes with the room,” Rey points out. 

Ben rolls his eyes. “I mean somewhere not in the lobby of our hotel where all our bandmates and roadies are staying.” 

Rey looks around them; she doesn’t see anyone else who looks familiar--just the usual mix of business travelers. 

“But it’s included in the room!” Rey protests. 

There’s a chafing dish full of wet egg substitute, a stack of high fructose corn syrup yogurts, and a pile of stale white bread. Well, but it’s paid for. 

“I put two bagels and a whole bunch of bananas in my backpack. You can have them. Will that get your money’s worth?” Ben wheedles. 

Rey considers that. 

“Fine,” she says. “I’m going to take a shower first, though. Please nick some of those jam packets too, please.” 

* * *

She’s not familiar with the geography of St. Louis, so she can’t object when Ben summons a hire car instead of walking to breakfast, but her suspicions grow when they drive away from the convention center, cross several freeways, and ultimately turn into a sprawling parks complex. 

“You said breakfast,” she tells Ben sharply. “Where are we going?”

“We’ll get breakfast,” Ben says soothingly as they wind through a leafy area dotted with museums and gardens.

“Where are we getting breakfast?” 

Ben doesn’t answer, instead smiling out the passenger window. 

After a winding drive through narrow, wooded roads, the car pulls up at a cluster of bright blue, peaked buildings. Crowds of schoolchildren are queued in large groups outside them, herded by harried looking teachers. Rey finally locates a sign. 

“The zoo? Why are we at the zoo, Ben,” Rey growls as Ben leans across her to open her door.

“Breakfast,” he says, grinning at his own cleverness.

Rey sighs as she exits the car, Ben climbing out after her. “Is this supposed to be a date?” 

“Of course not,” Ben says. “You would never have agreed to go on a date with me, and also, this zoo is free.” 

“I see,” Rey says, pulling her mobile out to summon a return ride. “I have things to do today. I’m going back to the hotel.” 

Ben looks disappointed, but not altogether surprised. 

“I suppose I’ll just have to go feed the penguins by myself,” he says, with an air of vague dismay. 

God, he knows all her weak spots. She could have resisted an invitation to have dinner with him at a posh restaurant.

It’s been two weeks on this tour, she’s been through a dozen American cities, and she’s yet to do or see anything really new and exciting. She’d love to feed a penguin. _Love_ to. 

“That can’t be free.”

“Well, it’s prepaid, so it doesn’t matter,” he responds, without any logic.

She narrows her eyes at him, trying to think through all the possible negative outcomes of spending a day at the zoo with Ben Solo. 

“I’m not holding your hand or anything,” she warns him. 

“Suit yourself,” he says, waving the car off. "But if you change your mind, I'm always in the mood for a little light hand-holding." 

* * *

She feels a bit better disposed towards Ben after he’s purchased her a smoothie served in a whole, hollowed-out pineapple, and they’ve watched a polar bear swim by the glass of its enclosure, eyeing a nearby toddler with a predatory gleam in its black eyes. 

“Did you actually want to talk about Poe?” Rey asks as they stroll over to the flamingo exhibit. 

“Oh, yeah,” Ben says absently. “Can we share him? I need to hire him for the rest of the tour.” 

Rey snorts. “No, you don’t. He’s rubbish. He was just booking bar mitzvahs and anniversary parties before all this. He’s got no idea what he’s doing.” 

Ben is kind enough not to point out that Rey was playing those same bookings. 

“He’s loyal, at least,” Ben says. “He’s not going to rat me out to my label or sell my underwear on eBay. Hux should have set up all the travel already. I just need him to manage it.” 

Rey continues shaking her head. “And you couldn’t possibly have him negotiate with Empire, those creeps would eat him alive.”

Ben leans on the rail, considering the pink birds.

“He won’t need to do that. I’m under contract with Empire for two more albums.”

_Two? After the three he's put out in the last five years?_

“Oh, Ben,” Rey says sadly. He says he hates his label, and yet he just keeps signing the renewal of their lease on his soul. 

Ben shifts and looks at her, his muscular arm dangling over the railing. “It could be a million, it wouldn’t matter. You and I both know that. It’s not like I’m going to write them anything.”

Rey looks away at the horizon.

“You had a new album just last year,” she says. That one, at least, had been 100% Ben Solo, as far as she knows. 

“I wrote all those songs before I met you. They were barely even finished. Nobody liked it. Not me, not the critics, not the fans.” 

“Why’d you release it, then?” Rey asks curiously. It’s not terrible. It’s technically perfect, and almost interesting in some parts, but she and Pitchfork had agreed that there was no ‘there’ there.

“You know. It’s a machine. The label always wants more, more, and it’ll chew you up and spit you out if you don’t produce.” Ben turns and leans back against the railing, tilting his chin up to squint at the sky. “I’m not a great composer, Rey. I can fiddle with a percussion line, maybe put together a guitar solo, tweak the lyrics...but I’m not you. The good stuff was all you on those two albums.”

Rey does know that, hadn’t considered it open to debate, but she’s perversely motivated to argue with Ben.

“Oh come on. The Knights of Ren had loads of hits. You got your first Grammy at 19.” 

“Best rock performance, not song or album. And anyway, I wasn’t the only composer on those songs either. Empire had a dozen different songwriters and album doctors working with us, molding us, telling me how to sit and stand and play, two thumbs directly up my ass all day long.” 

“But you said you had creative control back,” Rey says. “Don’t you?”

Ben shrugs. “For all the good it does me. It was mostly about performing; I can play what I want, with whoever I want, and they can’t do shit about it.” Ben pauses, takes a deep breath. “I didn’t let them tell me what to do on _Alone_ either.” 

Rey gives him a stern look, and he shrugs helplessly. He walks further down the hill towards the flamingos, who are gorgeous creatures, but smell strongly of bird and shrimp. He puts a quarter in the food dispenser and hands Rey half his pellets. They toss the pellets to the overfed, skeptical creatures. 

“I didn’t do it to piss you off, you know. I thought I was blowing up my career. I didn’t give a shit anymore. You wouldn’t talk to me, Snoke and Palpatine were on my ass every day, I could tell the rest of the guys hated the material...and I thought, I’d just put it out, it would flop, and that would be it.”

Rey flings a handful of pellets at his chest.

“You’re such a knobhead,” she says, but without much heat. 

“Yeah, I know,” he agrees. 

She can almost wish it had flopped. What would she have thought, if Ben had put those songs out to no acclaim, no congratulations? It would have stung. It would still have been a betrayal. But…

If Ben had come back to Birmingham, hat in his hands, she might have been able to meet him there, on the ground of their mutual failures. They might have been able to find their way back to each other. 

Ben dusts his hands on the seat of his trousers. 

“Think the penguins like an early lunch?” 

They wind their way to the penguin and puffin exhibit, and talk no more about it. There are families there to have a behind-the-scenes encounter with the fat little birds, but Rey feels oddly at peace, waiting in line with Ben for their turn to toss bits of anchovy and have their picture taken with a chinstrap penguin named Donnie.

Ben holds his mobile out for a selfie with Rey and the bird, and she considers that two pictures now exist of the two of them together. 

They had a relationship that lasted two months, engendered two photographs, and resulted in two albums certified gold. A strange kind of a tally.

Rey catches herself having a good time. But that wasn’t the problem, was it? She and Ben always got on well. It’s not like he’s got some disagreeable habits or she can’t stand his politics. She just doesn’t know if she can ever trust him again. 

Still, after they sit on a bench outside the cheetah exhibit to eat hot dogs and toasted raviolis for lunch, Rey rubs a bit of ketchup off the corner of Ben’s mouth with a thoughtless flick of her thumb. And then thinks about it. 

Ben is very still when she leans over to rub her lips lazily across his sun-warmed mouth. She thinks he is not going to respond, at first, but then he leans into it, parting his lips and swiping his tongue across hers. They snog like teenagers for a few minutes, since the cheetahs don’t mind, and there’s nobody else to see them. 

By the time they stop, her lips feel swollen and her heart is racing. Ben toys with the tips of her hair where it brushes her shoulders, but his expression is serious.

“You’re sending me mixed signals, you know,” he chides her.

Rey narrows her eyes. “I’m not sending you signals of any kind. I’m just kissing you.”

“Yeah, I noticed,” he says, stretching his arm out to wrap it around her shoulders. He stares at her as though attempting to read her mind. 

“Stop it,” Rey tells him. “Stop thinking about what it means. Stop thinking about what’s going to happen tomorrow, next week, three months from now when the tour’s over. That’s where you always get into trouble.”

“Thinking?”

Yes, that, Rey thinks, but also, “No, your plans. They’re always rubbish. Don’t plan. Just be here with me.” 

“And kiss you?”

Yes, that, Rey thinks. 

* * *

**_Then_ **

Their host lives in a great white semi-detached house in St. John’s Wood, with a circle drive out front. Ben tosses the keys of his grandfather’s car to the valet as though he’s done so a thousand times, and leads her indoors without ringing the doorbell. Inside, several dozen guests are ranging across the pale wooden floors and out the French doors to the garden behind the house, where fairy lights twinkle over the verdant lawns. 

Rey tugs down her shorts, wishing she’d packed something nicer to change into. That she’d owned something nicer. She smells like sweat and sun cream, and even if Ben does too, he’s indistinguishable in his dark t-shirt and jeans from half the other guests. 

There are plenty of other women there, but most are clad in dresses tending to the short and tight, paired with high heels that knock divots out of their host’s green lawns. 

“This is my partner, Rey Johnson,” Ben introduces her as they greet strangers, and she’s not sure whether that implies that they’ve set up expense reimbursements together or joint housekeeping. 

It doesn’t matter; none of the men they meet look further than her tits, and the women than her handbag. 

As Rey paid cash for neither, she is generally dismissed. Ben, though, they’re all thrilled to meet. 

“Kylo Ren!” says more than one, zeroing in on him from across the room. They want to know what he’s doing in London, who he’s seeing, when’s he heading back on the road?

Ben smiles and mentions a new project, and their eyes mostly glaze over until they can touch base again on mutual acquaintances, past concerts, new releases. Rey has no cards to play in that game, so she remains silent and close to Ben, which doesn’t seem to surprise anyone. 

Eventually, she comes up with the idea of getting them drinks, and Ben smiles at her as she excuses herself in search of the bar. 

A couple of people have set up stations in the kitchen, handing bottles of beer out of buckets of ice and pouring top shelf liquors into plastic cups. 

Rey hasn’t a good idea of what Ben prefers, she realizes, but she gets a bottle of cider for herself and a whiskey neat for Ben. 

He’s not where she left him; she has to walk through several rooms full of guests, who seem to be a mix of middle-aged businessmen with expensive haircuts and more weathered rocker types with tattoos peeking out of collars and shirtsleeves. 

Rey eventually finds Ben in the garden, one hand in his pocket, talking to one of the business types, a short man of indeterminate age with thick, black-rimmed glasses and an anonymous cream oxford. 

Ben’s already got a drink in his hands, and he waves at Rey as she approaches. She feels awkward now for double-fisting her drinks. 

“Jack, this is my partner, Rey Johnson,” he repeats, gesturing to her with his free hand. “Rey, sweetie, this is Jack Abramsen, our host.”

Rey is still frowning at the ‘sweetie’ when she calculates that this is the man who works for the label Ben’s interested in, and has to rapidly wipe her features to neutrality. Ben gracefully scoops the whiskey out of her right hand so that she can shake hands, and drains it. 

“Very nice to meet you,” Rey murmurs.

Jack’s smile is kind, but not particularly interested, as he responds with the same sentiments.

“So what brings you to my island, Ben?” he asks, switching his attention back to him. 

Ben explains the end of his contract, his mother’s rental of the cottage, his grandfather’s car, and Jack nods along with the story, his mood relaxed.

“So, I’ve been working on a demo, some new material. With Rey,” Ben adds, bringing her into the story for the first time. 

“Oh, you’re a musician?” Jack asks, looking Rey over again, and having apparently assumed her to be purely decorative. 

“A singer and songwriter,” Ben says, before Rey can object to the characterization. “She sings beautifully. Like Fiona Apple or Chan Marshall.” 

Jack looks Rey over more carefully, as though her musical abilities might be revealed somewhere around her collarbones. But he smiles. 

“And Empire already passed on it?” Jack asks, his eyebrows lifting. 

Ben grimaces, taking a slug of his drink. “No, they haven’t seen it yet. They didn’t invest in my solo album, so I thought I might shop it on this one.” 

Jack covers his own reaction with a sip of his red wine, but Rey sees it. The flicker of disappointment.

“Did you get a chance to meet Amy yet? She’s done a lot of successful duets, if that’s what you had in mind,” Jack says, opening his stance, and pointing out a middle-aged woman in a black sheath dress at the edge of the next group of people.

Rey can recognize a dismissal when she hears one, but Ben digs in. 

“Would you mind giving me your read on the demo for Universal? If I sent it your way?” Ben asks. 

Jack winces. “Ben, I’m sure it’s fantastic. I’ve always been a big fan, and I even liked your EP. But the last time I tried to poach an artist from Empire, it got so tied up in litigation that I didn’t make any money even after I won. You let me know if Alistair turns you down, sound good?” His tone is breezy and casual. 

Ben manages a sickly smile.

“Sure, will do,” he says.

Jack reaches up to clap Ben on the shoulder. “And give my love to your mother when you see her, will you? Incredible woman.” 

* * *

Ben makes a beeline for the kitchen after that, without stopping to explain the import of his conversation with the Universal executive. 

“Want anything?” he asks, refilling his glass with whiskey. He’s in motion to cover that he’s gutted, Rey thinks. 

Rey shakes her bottle in negation, stepping closer to him. 

“Ben, do you want to go-” she begins, but they’re accosted by Tad from earlier, who has obviously been at the party longer than they have.

Tad wraps an arm around Ben’s shoulders, and Rey expects Ben to shrug it off, but he seems relieved, if anything, at Tad’s absent affection.

“Hey, mate, wanna come downstairs? Some of the lads are jamming, I’d love to hear you play again,” Tad says. 

“Yeah,” Ben says. He shoots the rest of his drink, sets it down. “Sounds good.”

* * *

The basement of Jack’s house is soundproofed and spacious, with low sofas edging the space and a variety of instruments scattered through the room. There’s a far more skilled player on the single upright piano, so Rey takes a seat in the corner and watches Ben play. Most of the men seem familiar to friendly with him, and she assumes they’re the other members of his former opening act or Knights of Ren fans. 

Ben’s not a conversationalist, but put a guitar in his hands and his attention is engaged as long as anyone cares to capture it. People move in and out of the room and the group as they play rock standards on low amplification, howling the choruses in unison and refilling drinks. 

Ben checks in with her from time to time, collapsing to the seat next to her, kissing her cheek, declining Tad’s offer to do lines in Jack’s guest bath, leaving again when someone asks him if he can play the lead to ‘Wild Horses’ or ‘Sultans of Swing.’ He can, he can, he can. Ben commands every eye in the room when he picks up a guitar; he’s talented and handsome, the center and source of the energy. 

She never gets the opportunity to ask what it means if they have to pitch the demo to Empire. She nurses her cider, composing in her mind, until the room grows crowded, and another woman sits down on the other end of the sofa, collapsing gratefully as the pressure is relieved off her feet, jammed into high-heeled sandals. 

“Hey,” she says, as Rey salutes her with a tip of her bottle. “I’m Christine.”

“Rey.” 

“So, who are you here with?” Christine asks. She’s wearing a short orange tube dress, but it’s saved from trashiness by the quality of her blowout and manicure. She’s like an alien from a different planet, as far as Rey’s concerned. 

Rey considers telling Christine that she’s a special guest of Jack Abramsen, but she worries that makes her sound like a Make-A-Wish kid, so she nods at Ben, who is doing shots with the drummer from Shadow Collective in the opposite corner of the room.

“Kylo Ren?” the girl asks, her eyebrows lifting in shock. She squints at Rey, in her trainers and sun cream, obviously wondering how such a trick was brought off. Rey shrugs. 

“I’m here with Tyber Zenn, you know, the Zenn Consortium?” Christine asks, failing to impress Rey, who hasn’t heard of them in the first place. Christine smirks a little. “But I don’t think I’ll be leaving with him.” Christine scans the growing crowd of musicians like a shopper at the market. 

Rey has no response to that, considering that she has never in her life pondered hunting a rock star for sport. 

She’s ready to go.

* * *

The next time Ben slumps over next to her, his limbs are loose and heavy, and his shirt smells like someone has spilled something on it. 

He wraps his arms around her and kisses her neck. He’s hot and sweaty, and Rey wriggles away fractionally. Ben lets her go and rubs his hand up and down her bare thigh. Nuzzles into her shoulder. 

“You should come up and sing something with me,” he slurs. “You have such a beautiful voice. They should all hear you sing.” 

She hasn’t checked her mobile, but she thinks it’s nearly three in the morning. She’s tired, and she’s bored, and she wonders whether Ben’s taken something besides a dozen or more shots of whiskey. 

“Just some molly,” he says, and Rey cringes.

She opens her mouth to ask if they can go, but Christine reappears, her cheeks flushed and eyes bright. Her hemline, if anything, has gotten higher. 

“Oh hi!” she says to Rey, eyes fixed on Ben. “I remembered while we were talking how much I liked your friend’s last EP.” 

_Cunt_ , Rey thinks. 

“I need to piss,” Ben says, oblivious to Christine’s presence. He pushes off Rey’s thigh and wobbles towards the loo. Rey shoots a dark glance at Christine, and thinks she’d better go with him.

Rey shoos a couple out of the bathroom and shuts the door behind Ben. Waits. Waits longer than she thinks Ben needs. Bangs on the door. 

Ben doesn’t answer, so Rey pushes it open, heart starting to pound. Ben’s standing at the sink, watching the water from the faucet pour down the drain. Rey grabs his face and turns it to her, and his eyes are black pools. 

“Can we go?” she asks, in a voice that is both softer and calmer than she feels.

Ben’s smile is slow and sadder than she’s seen yet on his face. “Yeah, sure,” he says, and stumbles until Rey tosses one of his arms over her shoulders. 

They make it up the stairs like that, Ben’s sweaty, stiff body leaning into hers, his face in her hair. She fishes the valet claim ticket out of his back pocket. The valet sprints off down the street to retrieve the Citroen while Rey supports most of Ben’s body weight. Then helps her wedge Ben into the passenger seat of this grandfather’s car. Ben’s not daft enough to protest, though, and Rey’s already decided to slap the shit out of him if he does. 

Once they’re in the car, though, Rey realizes that she doesn’t know where to go next. Even if she could retrieve their hotel reservation, she doubts anywhere Ben would book them for the evening would let her check them in at half past three in the morning while Ben’s so obviously off his face. She looks over at Ben--he’s starting to crash, his chin drooping down to his chest. 

She slaps the steering wheel, tears beginning to prick her eyes. She takes several deep, shuddering breaths and presses her palms against her eyelids. She wants, painfully, to call her mother. To be able to call her mother. 

Ben’s twisting in his seat, unable to get comfortable. Rey reaches out and pats his knees before shifting into gear. “It’s okay, Ben, it’s okay,” she reassures him, and herself. She’ll find a 24-hour petrol station and buy some energy drinks. She’ll just take him home to sleep it off. He’ll be safe. She’ll be with him the entire time.

An hour into the ride, Rey has to pull over to the shoulder on the M40 so that Ben can vomit over a guardrail. The hazard lights on the Citroen don’t work, and Rey shivers, watching nervously for oncoming traffic. 

"Sorry," Ben mumbles when Rey tucks his hair back behind his ears and wipes his face with his dirty t-shirt. 

It’s dawn before Rey gets Ben back to his cottage, and he’s asleep against the window. She opens the door and dips her head to his chest to listen to his breathing out of superstitious terror. Once reassured, she knows what to do: she helps him into the house, then his bedroom. She draws back his sheets and pulls off his shoes, then his shirt and jeans. She sets a trash can next to his bed, and a glass of water and two nurofen on his bedside table. Cries a little more. 

Then she strips off her shorts and crawls in next to him, ear pressed against his back to hear his heartbeat. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter was light on the music and heavy on the angst, wasn't it?
> 
> If anyone is on guest and needs an account invitation to AO3 due to the new comment policy, DM me @YTCShepard or email me YTCShepard@gmail.com


	14. This Is The Last Time

**_Now_ **

Two weeks later, they’re playing their last American concert in Shelburne, Vermont before going back across the pond for their European leg. They drove in from Quebec the day previous; it’s much cheaper to stay in Burlington, not to mention very scenic. 

Many members of both bands have decamped to the Ben & Jerry’s museum (ice cream being an interest that can unite even the Knights of Ren and the less wary members of Rey’s group), and Rey has a rare free morning. 

It’s gorgeous outside, and they’ll play in the late afternoon rather than the evening for once, on a vast green lawn sloping down to Lake Champlain. Rey pleasantly anticipates an easy evening of selling t-shirts to happy hippies and professors from the University of Vermont. 

So she sits on the balcony of her hotel room, fiddling with Anakin Skywalker’s guitar, until she notices the lights on in the back of Ben’s bus. 

He’s been trying, she has to admit. Trying hard not to press her for more than she’s willing to give, first and foremost. Ben’s natural instincts would have been to announce his sentiments along with the credits at his next concert, and he is cowed only by his fear of upsetting the fragile peace between them. So he doesn’t ask her for anything. And he doesn’t promise her anything. And when she deigns to eat with him backstage, or ride for a few hours on his bus, or kiss him in a dressing room, he accepts it like a gift of macaroni art. It’s not what he wants, but he appreciates the sentiment behind it. 

Rey writes down her thoughts and closes her songbook. Then she heads for the tour bus, since she doesn’t think Ben went to the ice cream museum. She doubts he’s even eaten ice cream since the Thatcher government. 

She hears guitar music when she steps on the bus, which she expected, and other voices, which she didn’t. Since he sacked the bassist and the backup singer, Ben hardly seems to get on with the other Knights of Ren, though he’s friendly enough with the roadies and sound techs. 

It’s Rose and Jannah, she is surprised to discern. A cello joins Ben’s guitar in a whimsical burst of melody. 

“Your Ex-Lover is Dead!” Rose squeals. “But that’s not it--he’s showing his arse with that, ‘I was trying to remember your name.’ Bull-shite, my good man, you’re still in it, you remember her name. Next!”

“Okay, okay,” Jannah says, lifting her bow off the strings. “How about this--’Where Does the Good Go.’ Do it, Ben.” 

They’re in the far back of the bus, where the bunks are stacked in rows of three. Ben and Jannah are seated in the rear banquette with their instruments, while Rose sprawls out on someone’s bed, kicking his pillow with her shoes. Rey wonders if there has been an incident.

Ben sees Rey and opens his mouth, but Jannah pokes him with her bow and he obediently begins to strum the simple, palm-muted intro to the Tegan & Sara song. 

“Look me in the eye and tell me you don’t find me attractive,” he sings in a sugary falsetto, making Rose giggle. 

“Hey gang,” Rey says under her breath, trying to figure out how the impromptu concert has come to pass. “What’s up?” Rose turns her head and winks at Rey. 

“So, we’re trying to agree on the best-worst breakup song ever,” Rose announces. “I mean, besides yours,” she hastens to add. 

Ben nods in agreement that yes, Rey has written the very best songs about bad breakups. Or possibly the worst, it’s not clear from Rose’s phrasing. 

“We had to take Gloria Gaynor out of the running, of course. Too obvious,” Jannah amends. 

“Well, we wouldn’t want to be obvious,” Rey says faintly. 

“Ben’s like a jukebox. He can play anything,” Rose explains, head pillowed on her forearms. 

“Any particular reason we needed to know which song is best-worst?” Rey asks, and Ben’s face mirrors the thought. Rey strongly suspects that Rose has arranged this scenario to fuck with Ben somehow, but the payoff’s still to come. 

“Science!” Rose chirps, and Ben gives her a stiff smile. Rose flicks a piece of hair behind her ear. “Also, because I saw you coming out of his dressing room yesterday after soundcheck, and I thought we all hated him still?” 

Ah. Ben’s looking a little tight around the eyes, but that sort of thing can only be good for him, Rey thinks. 

“So, what are we going to do after we figure out the best song?” Rey asks, trying to keep things light.

“I thought we could have a special benefit concert,” Rose says. “Make Ben play. Maybe next St. Valentine’s Day? Or sooner, if you dump him again?” 

Ben blinks, trying to maintain his neutral expression. 

“Oh, how about, ‘The Calendar Hung Itself?’” Jannah suggests.

“That one’s a bit more ‘fuck me’ than ‘fuck you,’” Ben interjects. Rose and Jannah look surprised to see him playing along. He shrugs. 

“I had a playlist,” he admits. “After all, I was the one who got broken up with, you guys remember that?”

Rose opens her mouth to retort, a certain battle gleam in her eye, and Rey hastens to intercept her. 

“‘Cut Your Bangs,’ the Girlpool version,” Rey says decisively. They all screw up their faces as they summon the lyrics. 

“Hmmm, a dark horse, for sure, but that line about ‘maggots around your heart’ probably made someone reexamine their life choices,” Ben says appreciatively, plucking along the D and G chords. 

_ You say you'll cut your bangs _

_ I'm calling your bluff _

_ When you lie to me it's in the small stuff _

“I had a playlist too,” Rey says. She looks at Rose. “Don’t worry, I’ve still got it. You remember, the first song we did together was “In the Air Tonight?’” 

Rose cackles. “Oh that’s right. Should we cover it?” She drums on the bedframe to the beat of Phil Collins’ famous transition. 

“Sure,” Rey says, grinning at Ben. “I don’t think our set list is awkward enough for Ben yet.” 

Ben lifts his eyebrows in challenge. “I’ll even come play it with you if you’ll come up for a couple songs. We’re down to half our catalog without a backup singer.” 

“Fine,” she sighs. It’s fucked up, negotiating whether she’ll sing words she wrote with Ben, and everyone here knows it. “Do it in the first half; I’ll need to go down the merch table to sign shit.” 

“Pleasure doing business with you,” he says, eyes searching her face to see if she’s torqued again. 

Rose and Jannah are looking back and forth between the two of them. And Rey realizes she’s lost the plot.

She clears her throat. “And actually, could I talk to you about something?” 

“Sure,” Ben says, confused. Rey looks pointedly at Rose.

“Ah. Right,” he says, gingerly rising to his feet, and bids his farewells to Rose and Jannah. “Ladies, it’s been a pleasure. Always happy to revisit the worst times in my life with you, let’s do it again tomorrow.” 

Jannah gives him a mocking salute, and Rose pretends to pencil him into an imaginary appointment book. 

Ben trails Rey back to her room, nearly going cross-eyed trying to figure out whether he’s about to get laid or told off instead. 

When they’re in her room, with the door shut, she pulls her songbook out of her handbag and gives it to him.

“What’s this for?” he asks, opening it and squinting at her musical notations.

“For you,” she says.

He flips through a couple of pages, glances warily at her, then lets the book hang limply at his side.

“This feels like a trap,” he says, his face creasing in concern. “What do you want me to do with this?”

“It’s a gift, Ben,” she says. 

It’s all the material she didn’t use for Resistance, plus a few things she’s worked on during the tour. Everything that’s left of her pain and grief. It feels purgative to finish it and hand it off. 

He shakes his head and tries to hand it back to her. “No, I...no. You shouldn’t do this. You’ve got a second album to put out.”

“I know,” she says easily. “But I’m not pressed for time or material. And I don’t want my next album to be so…” she makes a frustrated gesture. “You know. There’s more to me than you.” All the songs in the book--they’re the sad ones. The angry ones. She’s not sure she’s totally done being sad and angry, but she’s looking forward to it. 

“But why give it to me?” Ben says, still wary. “You never even cashed any of those royalty checks. They’re still sitting in trust.” She doesn’t want money for it, he means. 

She thinks about that. About the sad look on his face when he talked about the two albums he owes but can’t write. His joy when he’s in front of a crowd, his hands on the guitar. The way she felt, the first time she heard him sing. 

“I know you’ll make them beautiful,” she says. “And I want you to have...choices.” 

Ben sits heavily on the edge of her bed, as though his legs won’t hold him easily. A muscle in his cheek jumps against his clenched jaw. 

“Yeah, okay,” he says after long minutes. “Would you hand me a guitar?” He sniffs heavily, staring at the clothes and equipment Rey has strewn around her hotel room. 

Rey passes him his grandfather’s guitar, and he wrinkles his forehead to read her notations, right hand absently tracing the peeling varnish on the body. 

“Will you sing the vocal line?” he asks, feeling out the slides on the melody. It’s simple for him, she thinks, but it took her all the last few weeks to master. 

_ Oh, when I lift you up you feel _

_ Like a hundred times yourself _

_ I wish everybody knew _

_ What’s so great about you _

_ Oh, but your love is such a swamp _

_ You don’t think before you jump _

_ And I said I wouldn’t get sucked in _

_ I-  _

_ This is the last time _

The melody repeats every few measures, and Ben barely needs half his attention to play it. She can tell he’s already imagining percussion, strings, horns, God knows what. He watches her face as she sings the chorus, the verses. 

She reaches the repeating refrain, and he joins in:

_ I won't be vacant anymore _

_ I won't be waiting anymore _

He gives a choked kind of a laugh after the second repetition, when Rey amends it to,

“I won’t get wasted anymore.”

Ben grins in appreciation, then follows up with, “I won’t break shit anymore.”

“I won’t fake it anymore,” Rey sings. 

“I won’t sleep naked anymore,” Ben warbles, still plucking the melody. He stills his fingers, his grin fades. The corner of his mouth crooks down. “It’s good,” he says. “You should play it.” He hands her the songbook back, and puts the guitar on the floor. “I’m not going to put out two more albums with the Knights of Ren,” he says. 

Rey cocks her head at him. “Did you tell them that?” 

Ben laughs. “They don’t deserve that. They’ll fire me after a while, I guess. You know they made plans for what to do if I died? They had a whole ‘Best of’ album ready to ship.”

“Christ, Ben,” Rey breathes. “When?” 

“Oh, no, it really wasn’t that bad,” Ben tries to reassure her, alarmed. “I broke a lot of guitars and closed down a lot of bars, but it wasn’t that bad. Really. They were probably planning on having me hit by a bus or something if  _ Alone _ didn’t sell.” 

It’s not really funny, but he smiles at her anyway. 

He takes another deep breath. “I talked to Luke,” he says. 

Rey lifts her eyebrows, impressed. “I thought you did that months ago?”

“No, I sent him an email months ago,” Ben says. “Just a bunch of your YouTube links, and I told him not to write back. This was an actual conversation.”

“That you both survived?” Rey asks. 

“Remains to be seen. Anyway, he’d hire me as a studio musician, he said. So there’s that. I can go back to Thousand Oaks after the tour, if I drop out with Empire.” 

Ben looks at her through his eyelashes. There’s a question in that simple, declarative statement. He’s never forgiven his uncle for trying to quash his musical career. But he’ll do it--if Rey says she’ll be there. He’ll stop performing and cut ties with Empire. 

She just doesn’t know if he’d resent her for it, if he did. 

“I don’t know what we’re doing after the tour, Ben,” Rey sighs. “I doubt we’re going back to Birmingham, but I don’t know where everyone else wants to go. It’s not just up to me.” 

“I know, but...where do you want to go?” Ben asks. “Would you think about coming back to LA with me?” 

She still doesn’t know what to tell him, but she’s glad he’s finally asking. 

“I feel like this is the beginning for me,” she says, taking a step closer to him and splaying her hand across his chest. “I’m still just- figuring all of this out. This is my first album. My first tour. Do you understand? Ben, I know we have...history. But that was a long time ago and far away. And I think we’re both different people from who we were back then. We both want to be, anyway.” 

Ben struggles with this, looking down at her fingertips where they press against his diaphragm. 

“You mean you don’t still feel anything?” he asks, brow creasing.

“No,” she says, shaking her head and bringing her lips up to brush across his jawline. “I mean we’re feeling something new.” 

Ben turns his head and captures her mouth, kissing her tentatively until Rey runs her tongue across the seam of his lips. Then he puts his palms against her lower back and tugs her against his body.

He feels so big and warm and solid when she leans up against him. His hair’s been growing out on the tour, and he doesn’t look as tired and thin as when she first saw him at Live Nation. She slips her hands under the hem of his shirt and rubs her thumbs across the soft skin over his hipbones. 

Oh, she had wanted so much to be able to rely on him. To trust that he knew what he was doing, and that he would always do exactly what he said he would do. She thinks that terrified both of them. 

When she grabs Ben’s shirt and tugs it off and over his head, he mutters something like ‘oh thank God.’

“What, has nobody ever made you work for it this long, Ben?” she asks him archly as he pulls her back against his bare chest. She runs a hand up his chest and tweaks a nipple, hard. 

“Who’d spend the time?” he asks, not quite rhetorically. His hands grip her ass, flexing as though he’s restraining himself. 

Rey lets Ben unbutton her blouse and run appreciative fingers over the lace of her bra. 

“Never seen you in lingerie before,” he says, ducking his head to suck her nipple through the fabric. 

Rey’s body is responding to the feel of Ben’s calloused fingers on her skin--it’s Pavlovian, instinctive--but she still wants to set him straight. 

“I couldn’t afford it!” she laughs. 

He straightens, sliding his hands up her body so that his thumbs can circle her nipples into hard peaks. 

“I would have bought you anything you wanted,” he says, a small wrinkle between his eyebrows. “You just never asked for anything but takeout. And I didn’t want you to feel like I was trying to buy you or act like your rich older boyfriend or something.” 

“You  _ were _ my rich, older boyfriend,” Rey says, reaching behind herself to unhook her bra. “You should probably just have leaned into that.”

“Yeah, maybe,” Ben sighs, though he’s not so distracted as to look away from her bare tits. “I really fucked everything up, didn’t I? I had no idea what I was doing.” 

“You didn’t? I didn’t. I was just...swept away by everything.” 

Ben runs a knuckle between her breasts, then leans in to kiss her again, his tongue swiping between her lips. He pulls away and runs his hands soothingly up and down her sides. 

“I hadn’t had a girlfriend before, at least not since I was, like, a teenager in Luke’s house. I know that’s not an excuse, but it’s not like I knew better,” he explains. 

“You mean there’s no other girls out there with broken hearts?” she asks him lightly, pushing her shorts down over her hips. 

“I get the craziest fan letters, but...no,” he says, watching her bared skin with an avid expression. It falters, turns vulnerable. “Did I break your heart, sweetheart?” he asks. 

Rey really would rather finish getting naked than talk more about it, but it’s amazing to her that he really doesn’t know.

She takes his hand, puts it palm-down against her bare chest, over her heart.

“It’s okay now.” 

Ben exhales, tracing her collarbone with his fingertips. “You kept your cards pretty close to your chest, you know. I wasn’t really sure how you felt. I told myself for years that the reason I hadn’t heard from you was that you’d just washed your hands of me, and that was that.” 

Should she put her pants back on for this discussion, Rey wonders. 

“I’m not here to stroke your ego, you git,” she says, keeping her tone gentle and teasing. “If you didn’t realize I was in love with you, that’s just because you were an idiot.” She pushes him lightly, and he stumbles back towards the bed. 

He opens his mouth to speak again, and she shushes him by putting her hands on his knees.

“Ben, if you go rehashing everything that happened, you are not getting lucky this morning, because it’s just going to make me sad rather than horny, and right now at least, I’m still curious about the whole ‘pull my hair and call me names’ thing you mentioned.” 

He gives a strangled laugh and finally puts his hands to the button of his jeans. “I’m all talk on that, you know? You’ve already seen all my best moves.”

“What?” Rey asks, pretending to be shocked. Ben belatedly remembers to untie his oxfords, taking them off and setting them to the side of her room in a bit of domesticity that makes her heart clench. 

He strips to his boxers, then pulls her to him to straddle his lap. 

“Sorry,” he says. “I don’t think you learn how to be kinky when you never see the same woman more than twice. Too much risk of making the wrong move and getting arrested, you know?” He nuzzles into her chest, breathing deeply. 

Rey pushes him down on the bed, and he blinks at her in surprise.

“You slag,” she says, in faux outrage. She leans over him and bites him gently on the tip of his nose. Then she whispers into his ear, letting her bare cunt drag over his hardening cock. “Here I was hoping you were secretly into some really nasty shit. And you’d shag me like a proper rock star.” 

Ben’s body shudders beneath her, and he makes a face Rey dimly remembers him making when he’s inside her. 

“Jesus,” he croaks. “I’ll fucking  _ try _ .” 

He shuffles back on the bed, pulling her with him. 

“Come here,” he orders her, when his head is brushing the headboard. “Grab something to hold onto.” 

She feints as though to grab the top of his head, and he chuckles. “Sure, but also the bed, or something?” And then he’s lifting her, pulling her hips up and over his face. 

“Oh, shit,” she says, when his nose bumps against her clit. She reaches for the headboard with both hands, as she can’t seem to get her balance straight, even with Ben’s hands supporting her arse. 

She’s a little worried about smothering him, but soon she can feel his hot breath panting over her mound as his lips and tongue twist and lap against her. Her thighs start to tremble, and his grip on her arse is going to leave a pattern of ten bruises. 

“Oh,” she breathes as his thumb sweeps down from behind to press against her arse. He’s not applying pressure, just leaving it there, but the constellation of sensations: Ben’s silky hair against her thighs, his lips on her clit, the transgressive placement of his hands--it’s making her see stars around the edges of her vision. 

He’s going to have cum in his hair, she thinks, as her orgasm starts to vibrate through her body. He licks her through it tenderly until she’s slumping to the side, trying to catch her breath as the aftershocks dance along her nervous system. She watches him with hooded eyes as he wipes his face with the back of his hand, adjusts his jaw, and then grins at her as he strokes himself with the other hand. His cock is hard and dark, pointing up towards his lightly furred stomach. 

“Alright, you’re still going to need to brace yourself,” he says, arranging her on the mattress until she’s face down and spreadeagled. Rey pillows her face on her forearms, pleasantly anticipating the need to push against them. 

She feels a hand brush her lightly from the cleft of her arse to the nape of her neck, tracing along her spine. Ben walks on his knees to kneel between her spread legs. “Come on, sweetheart, I know you’re not tired yet,” he urges her, pulling her hips up and against him. 

It’s two of his fingers, she thinks, which press carefully inside her from behind, spreading her open. 

“I did buy some condoms,” he reflects as his fingers slowly move in and out of her, making a wet noise. “Do you want me to wrap it up?” 

She shakes her head, her cunt clenching at the thought of pulling on her knickers in a few minutes and walking downstairs for soundcheck with his cum still dripping between her thighs. 

Ben exhales, his fingers still working her steadily. She’s not prepared for the single stroke where he pulls his fingers out of her and thrusts his cock in instead: she chirps in surprise as he groans, sliding balls deep. 

He gives her a moment to adjust, but he doesn’t change the angle. His big body curves over her, muscular arms braced to either side of her head. 

“You okay?” he asks, dipping his head next to her ear. 

Rey whimpers an affirmative, and that’s all the encouragement he needs, because he starts to move. The pace he sets is slow but deep, and it’s all she can do not to moan at the apex of the downstroke. 

He mouths at the dip of her shoulder as his balls swing against her clit, his hips slap her own, and the bed makes extremely raunchy squeaking noises. 

Rey would laugh, if she could catch her breath, or maybe she needs to cry instead, because it feels overwhelming, and she doesn’t know where the emotion comes out. 

Ben digs his teeth in as his thrusts grow less coordinated, and he pulls her body harder back against him. He yanks her onto her hands and knees, but she’s not sure how long she can hold the position. 

She hears him chanting something--harmonic scales maybe--and realizes he’s trying to hold back. 

“Come in me,” she gasps. “Do it. Please.” 

He doesn’t need more invitation than that: Ben snarls a curse and jerks his hips microscopically further inside her, his cock pulsing in her cunt as it jerks. His forehead drips sweat against her shoulder, but he doesn’t pull her away. Instead, he leans back on his heels, wrapping an around her body to keep her flush against him. 

She can feel his semen already trickling out where their bodies are joined, but his hand dips down to swipe at her clit. 

“One more time,” he mumbles into her neck. “I wanna feel it.” 

Rey takes a deep breath and opens her eyes long enough to peek at their reflection in the bathroom mirror, a room away. 

Ben’s pale, muscular body, wrapped all around her tawny, freckled one. His head drooping over her shoulder, lips red and slack. His hand moving between her legs, gently circling where she is still spread around his softening cock. 

When she comes, her body convulses like a sob, and Ben squeezes her tighter against him. As soon as her body goes limp, though, he slides her forward and back on to the bed, rolling away to lie next to her. 

He stares up at the ceiling, his face looking young and astonished. Also thoroughly debauched. When he catches her staring, though, he’s back on her, rolling up against her, sucking a red spot into her collarbone. 

“What are you doing?” she giggles, feeling weightless and energized. 

“Giving you a hickey,” he mumbles into her skin. “Maybe two or three, we’ll see.”

She laughs and pushes him away, then straddles his sweaty chest, thinking she will leave a set of toothprints in his Adam’s apple in return. 

He looks at her wide-eyed, cheeks dimpling, as her wet cunt slides across him. 

“Ah, I probably should have asked this before. Do I need to, like, prepare for fatherhood, or are we okay?”

Rey laughs as her teeth press into his neck, and he makes a muffled noise of protest. 

“We’re okay,” she promises him. “We’re going to be okay.” 

* * *

**_Then_ **

Rey can’t sleep until Ben’s awake. He staggers off to the shower, and he’s gone long enough for Rey to finally sleep, even though she thinks it’s almost halfway through the next day. She wakes again to the mattress dipping as Ben crawls back into bed with her, dressed in clean clothes but with his hair still damp. He carefully pulls her against his chest, but his arms hold her too close.

Rey makes a noise of protest and he lets her go. She struggles up to a seated position and glares at him. He looks properly abashed, with his eyes bloodshot and face puffy, like maybe he’s been crying. 

That’s just the hangover, Rey thinks, uncharitably. 

“Did you have a good time?” Ben asks, and Rey thinks hard about throwing something at him. Instead she just stares at him so long that he seems to get the message anyway, and he looks away, flinching. 

“It’s not always like that,” he says. “It won’t be like that while we’re recording. Or touring. It’s just...we need to find a producer. I guess that’ll have to be Empire.”

Rey turns away. 

“And are you like that? Usually?” she asks.

Ben sighs. “I’m trying not to be,” he says, softly. 

Part of her wants to bury her head in his lap and sob, but how can she do that when he’s the one who made her feel like this? Maybe she’s just tired too. 

“Sweetheart, what is it?” he asks, touching her tentatively on the shoulder. “Is it about Universal? Just because Empire wouldn’t support my solo album doesn’t mean they won’t do this one with you.” 

And oh, she doesn’t care at all. She doesn’t give a single fuck about his career right now. 

“I used to be afraid my parents would die. And then they did,” she says, her tone clipped. She tries to think of a way to explain it, but anything else sticks in her throat. 

Ben is confused. “I thought they died in a car crash?”

Rey nearly chokes on her anger. “No, you bloody idiot, not a car crash. They got a bad batch and they died. I didn’t find out about it for a week because they didn’t tell me where they were going. I just waited for them to come home, and they didn’t.”

Ben startles at the vehemence in her voice, or maybe at the news. Hasn’t he been listening at all to what she’s sung? 

“Jesus,” he finally says. He slowly slides his hand from her shoulder down to her waist, then pulls her across the bed to him. She’s stiff but not resisting as he hesitantly wraps his arms around her again. 

“Rey,” he tries. “I’m not- I wouldn’t do that.”

She huffs without humor. “It felt like that.” 

“I know,” he says, though how could he? “I’m not going to leave you,” he says. He puts his face against her hair. “I won’t.” 

He rocks her back and forth, and some of the tears finally spill over.

“I love you,” he promises. “Rey, I know I drink too much, and I’m a dumb asshole, and you’re just finding out about all of this, but I’m not a liar and I’m not the kind of guy who leaves.” 

She chokes on a sob, and his arms tighten again. 

“I know, I know,” he says, without meaning, just trying to soothe her. “We’ll work really hard these next few weeks, and Alistair will want to sign the album. Alright? We can stay here and record it, or go back to Brooklyn...whichever. It’ll be okay. I’ll be with you. I’ll stay.” 

Rey nods against his chest. “Okay,” she hiccups. “I’ll do it.” 

* * *

Rose helps them finish the demo, wide eyed when Ben slips her £100 in cash at the end of the day.

“That’s a lot less than you’d make in the union,” he tells her as she packs up her drum sticks. 

“Ain’t that always the truth,” she agrees, even though Rey hadn’t even promised her any sort of payment for coming to the cottage for a few hours of drumming. 

Rey thinks that Ben is still not happy with the demo; Rose did clean up the drum lines quite a bit, but Ben’s going through agonies about the keyboard effects, not to mention the horns. Rey goes hoarse after a week, and even though she thinks she might be his equal on the piano or the keyboard, he gets very nervous, nearly frantic, when they have to finish the recording and send it off without re-doing the vocals for the third or fourth time. 

School is back in term, which means that Mr. Baccarin is able to cover more of Rey’s shifts, and she spends all her free time with Ben, telling herself sternly that it’s not the end. Ben certainly won’t admit to anything of the sort, even though he’s drinking more and sleeping less.

The answer from his label comes quickly: they want him down in London, two days later. 

“We’ll both go, of course,” Ben says. Rey tries to smile at him, even though she thinks she knows the answer already if they only asked for Ben by name. 

She wakes him up before they need to leave for their train and kisses him on the eyelids. He comes to smiling, for once, and she’s soft with him when she straddles him and pulls off the Foo Fighters t-shirt she’s been sleeping in. He sighs her name when he comes, and she tries to believe that everything he said will come to pass. 

* * *

“You should try the venison,” Mr. Snoke tells Rey, peering over her shoulder. “They do it very well here.” 

Empire Records’ executive offices are in a great Brutalist building in Kensington, all stained concrete and mirrored glass windows. Alistair Snoke is the American head of the rock division, and the person responsible for recruiting Ben to the Knights of Ren from under Luke Skywalker’s nose; he was the person Ben expected to lobby. Ben was taken aback, when he and Rey arrived for their afternoon meeting, to meet Sheev Palpatine, the chief executive of Empire. Rey doesn’t get the impression they’re acquainted, for all he hugged Ben like his long-lost child. Palpatine gives Rey the creeps; his skin is pouchy like a prehistoric lizard’s, but he’s dressed in the cropped, tight fashions of a banker in a glossy magazine advert. 

“That’s...deer, right?” Rey asks haltingly. Everything on the menu is more expensive than her utility bill, and the venison nears half her rent. 

Snoke is flamboyant in an aggressive way, like an exotic viper. His suit jacket is cut conservatively, but out of a shiny gold brocade, and trimmed with black velvet. Rey’s not sure who wouldn’t feel underdressed next to that, especially in August, and she’s doubting Ben’s advice to wear a dress. She didn’t want to wear the one Grace Ellen bought her for her parents’ funeral, so she’s in a cotton sundress with a pattern of mint leaves, and she’s been shivering in the air-conditioned offices of Empire Records all afternoon. 

“Yes, very nummy,” says Snoke. He motions to the waiter. “Venison for the young lady.” 

“Very good, sir,” the waiter says, his cool expression not shifting a whit. “How would she like that prepared?”

“Medium rare,” Snoke replies.

Ben and Rey were ushered into Snoke’s executive suite and asked to sit while he and Palpatine listened to the demo in front of them. Rey knows that Ben suffers greatly, listening to himself on a recording, but he keeps his face still and calm while their demo plays. Rey, for her part, winces over every bit of fuzz, each breath, each overly honest lyric. She squirms. She picks at her cuticles. 

The older men do not show their hands, watching Rey and Ben like inscrutable sphinxes. 

“So, my dear, what do your parents do?” Palpatine asks her, as though she’s a child he’s been accidentally seated next to at a wedding. 

Snoke is perhaps the age her father would have been, for all his blonde hair is wispy and straggling across his bald spot, but Palpatine is ancient. He was the one who asked her to sing with no accompanyment in his office. Ben hadn’t prepared her for that; she supposes it was an audition of sorts, but she hadn’t thought she would have to stand up, cold, and sing, 

_ I should live in salt for leaving you behind. _

His stare now reminds her of a wasp’s unblinking black gaze. 

“Are you still in school?” he asks. 

“I’m a mechanic,” Rey tells him, and Ben winces. 

Ben told them he thought they had enough material for two albums, or would soon. He wants a drummer, a brass section, a bassist, and at least two more guitarists. Snoke looked at Rey’s bare legs, her feet in their canvas ballet flats. 

The waiter brings Rey’s plate, and it’s just a big piece of bloody meat in the center of the white plate. Rey’s stomach lurches.

“Where have you performed so far?” Snoke asks her.

Palpatine offered Ben a tumbler full of whiskey out of the crystal decanter in his office at four in the afternoon, which Ben awkwardly refused.  _ Good for you _ , said Snoke. He looked at Rey, and then told Ben,  _ I’m glad to see you’re staying healthy _ . And Rey felt like she’d done something dirty. 

Rey carves her venison into small, exact cubes, then drops them one by one into her napkin.

Ben is talking to Palpatine in low tones, very quickly. He doesn’t meet Rey’s eyes. He’s not even looking at her. 

After dinner, they return to the Empire offices, now mostly empty. 

“My dear, would you mind waiting for a bit while we clean up some Knights of Ren business?” Snoke asks, brushing cigarette stained fingers across her upper arm. Rey shivers. She looks at Ben, who gives her a reassuring nod, and agrees. She watches the three men’s backs recede into the elevator. 

They leave her in a windowless conference room: a large white marble table surrounded by uncomfortable office chairs covered in levers and knobs. Rey checks the battery on her mobile, then settles in to wait. 

And wait. 

And wait. 

It’s nearly two hours later before Snoke knocks on the door, smiling gently as he opens it. He takes a seat on the other edge of the table, and puts a stack of paper down on it in front of him.

“Rey,” he says, rolling her name in his mouth. “It’s been such a pleasure meeting you.”

Rey goes still, the instinctive reaction of a prey animal. 

“Ben looks just fantastic,” he says. “Very healthy. I’m so glad he decided to take this vacation. Obviously, you’ve taken very good care of him.” 

Rey’s not sure that’s actually a compliment to her, so she remains silent. 

Snoke sighs, brushing the papers. “You seem like a smart young lady, so I am going to be honest with you. I don’t believe anything Ben’s brought us today is usable.” 

“Oh,” Rey says, feeling the last guttering flame of hope in her chest go out. 

He leans his cheek against his propped fist. “I can tell you care a great deal about the boy, so I want to level with you about my concerns that prompted this decision. The Knights of Ren are one of our most profitable franchises, but Ben is a loose canon. He’s inconsistently productive. He’s not necessarily the best suited to remain the bandleader. And here’s the problem.”

His pale eyes assess her. “I feel personally responsible for him. Ben doesn’t have the kind of back catalogue that will let him rest on his laurels for the rest of his career. If he doesn’t take this time to buckle down and put out something noteworthy, I’m afraid he’ll spend the rest of his days playing charity banquets and Indian casinos.” 

That can’t be true, Rey thinks. Ben’s beautiful, brilliant, so talented. He lights up every room he’s in. And the Knights of Ren--people have their posters in their bedrooms. There are dolls of them, aren’t there? 

“So, what do you want me to do?” Rey asks hoarsely.

Snoke looks at her with oily sympathy. “Ben wanted you to go to our Brooklyn studios with him while he worked with our session artists to generate some content for a new Knights album. Obviously, the Knights of Ren are an all-male concept, but he thought you could still be helpful with some of the instrumentation or backup vocals.”

Snoke’s tone turns slightly exasperated. 

“I’m afraid that won’t be possible, though. You seem like a very nice young woman with your head on straight, and I think you can realize why I can’t offer you a position with the Knights of Ren.” 

“Isn’t that up to Ben, though?” Rey asks, sitting up a little straighter. “Us?” 

Snoke slowly wiggles his head from side to side. “I’m afraid that won’t be possible. This proposal, with Ben, is for two more Knights of Ren albums, but subject to the studio’s creative control. We’re able to be generous, in light of the time since we last paid him an advance, but we’re going to have to insist on retaining control over the lineup.”

Snoke sighs and makes a moue of distaste. 

“Which brings us to what to do with you.” He makes Rey sound like a problem to be gotten rid of. 

“The Knights appeal to a young teen to new adult demographic,” he notes. “The costumes, the helmets, et cetera. It doesn’t offend me, personally, but frankly it’s not a great look for a man Ben’s age to be out with a teenage girl. I think it would be for the best if you stayed here, completed your education.” 

“I...what?” Rey says. “Why?”

“Like I told Ben, it’s time for him to clean up his act. Fulfill the promise we’ve always seen in him. Frankly, he needs to stop chasing tail and focus on his music, pardon my French. This proposal is contingent on him agreeing to buckle down and get an album out this year. I simply don’t think it’s possible with any more distractions.” 

She’s glad she didn’t eat the deer meat, because she thinks she would vomit on him, the way his mouth twists around the words. She needs to talk to Ben about everything Snoke’s said. She needs to get out of this room. 

“So that’s your final answer?” she says. “Because Ben thinks the demo is really good, and if you won’t support him, we’re going to shop it to different labels.”

Snoke picks up the papers in front of him and hands them to Rey. 

“This is a license agreement with the Knights of Ren. As you can see, it’s our form agreement, the same one Ben signed before. And like I said before, the Knights are one of our most valuable franchises. Ben’s got a lot of goodwill as the frontman, and I want him to continue that success. We’re paying him a large advance on his next two albums. Since you’ve been working with him all summer, I’d like you to sign it too, so we can wrap this all up.”

Rey takes the contract from him, makes as though to stuff it into her handbag.

“Thank you,” she says. “Ben and I will talk about it.” She’ll talk him into getting the hell away from this shark in person clothes. His uncle can’t be so bad. His mother sounds lovely. Even Abramsen said he’d take a look if Empire turned them down, and isn’t this Empire turning them down?

Snoke intersects her hand before she can put it away, takes the agreement back from her. “Oh, I don’t think that will be necessary.”

He flips it open to the back page. There’s a set of signature blocks with percentages hand-written next to them: 50% Benjamin Solo, 50% Rey Johnson. A large, round number at the top of the page, representing the advance to be paid to Ben. One signature, in lovely, flowing script. 

“You see, Ben’s already agreed.” 

* * *

Snoke left as soon as she signed, and she’s not sure what she should do next. Ben must be up with Sheev, planning the next Knights of Ren album.

Rey stares down at her fingers. They’re starting to peel a little bit. There hasn’t been time to practice the guitar. Or rather, they had time; they just spent it all working on this soap bubble dream of Ben’s. 

Rey’s chest convulses with a dry sob as she fumbles for her mobile and finds that it is dead. She’s not sure, but she thinks the last train might have already left. Ben thought they’d be done in time to take the train home, or that they’d go get a hotel. 

It’s not his home, or hers, is it?

She imagines walking through the building, looking for Ben. Imagines sleeping one more night next to him, imagines his explanations, his new plans. She can’t bear it. He signed away everything he ever promised her, and he didn’t even talk to her about it first. 

So she looks around the conference room until she finds a conference phone. Ten minutes of trial and error finally yield a dial-tone. 

Rey’s trembling fingers dial the one number she knows by memory, and a gruff male voice answers, thick with sleep. 

“Finn?” she asks, her throat closing up with humiliation and grief. “It’s Rey. I’m in London. Do you think...could Papa come get me?” 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter turned into a monster, but persons polled were unanimous in making room for more smut. 
> 
> Also, you'l see that I wedged in references to all my favorite break-up songs into this chapter--what's your favorite??


	15. Timefighter

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> BTW, we're still on the way to that happy ending, but I cried a lot writing the second half and alarmed my cat.

_**Now** _

Rey wakes up and doesn’t know where or when she is. This dislocation followed her to Europe and back; the shows are at different times, in different places, in different time zones. She can’t place herself until she’s checked her mobile and her color-coded calendar. 

She knows who she’s with at least--nobody else has tits like Ben, and she’s drooling into them. She removes her cheek from his chest, wiping it apologetically, and then painfully unsticks her body from his where their sweaty thighs are pressed together. 

Ben has completely defaulted on his vow to not sleep naked anymore, but she can’t say that she really minds. 

Europe was a whirl of light and sound and language and music. None of Rey’s band had spent much, if any, time on the Continent, and Ben found himself enlisted to play tour guide and concierge when they had the odd day off. 

He took them to Tivoli Gardens in Copenhagen, arranged a leopard safari in Hilvarenbeek, suggested paella in Barcelona. Rey doesn’t think there have been any words of welcome exchanged, but he’s been met with silent acceptance by the other members of the band. 

Here and now, Ben’s still snoring lightly, but he grumbles and rolls into the cooler spot she vacates when she stands up to go to the bathroom. 

It’s his bathroom; they’re back in New York to play Carnegie Hall, and Ben has finally lured her out to his flat in Brooklyn. It’s open-concept and “modern,” as Americans describe rooms that haven’t been painted or fully furnished. Ben’s innate neatness is obviously at war with the little time he spends in the place, and piles of art, books, instruments, memorabilia are stacked around the floor like landmines, waiting for him to put them away or hang them on the wall. They could have gone to the hotel with everyone else, instead of his flat, where he has several expired condiments and some frozen vegetables in the kitchen and toilets that have gone slightly fetid for not being flushed in months.

But Ben’s inner caveman has obviously instructed him to drag her back here, and at least he had a drawer full of delivery menus to choose from. Rey comes out of the bathroom with her hair piled on her head with one of Ben’s hair ties and roots in the fridge for the last night’s curry, intending to microwave it for breakfast. 

She hears Ben stumble out of bed, and then his heavy footsteps as he lumbers into the kitchen, looking for her. He wraps his arms around her from behind as she stands in front of the open fridge, contemplating whether aloo gobi or saag paneer reheated better. He nuzzles into her neck, trapping her arms. “I’ll get some bagels and coffee from the place down the block. Real New York breakfast. What do you want?” he says over a yawn. 

“Tea,” Rey giggles. His morning wood is poking her in the back, and he’s kissing down her neck in a hopeful kind of a way when someone knocks on the front door.

They both freeze and look at the clock--it’s almost eleven. 

They got in from Frankfurt the morning before, stepped blinking into morning in JFK, more than seven hours after they departed in morning Germany. 

Ben bought her lunch at Carnegie Deli, which failed to impress a loyal subject of the Queen with its meat-heavy sandwiches, but won her over with its cheesecake, and then transparently suggested napping back at his place in Brooklyn to sleep off the pound of meat and fat they’d each consumed.

They never did manage to fall asleep, but at least she’d finally seen Ben’s etchings. (He’d bought them in Portland on his first tour, and still hadn’t hung them up.) Instead, they lay in and around his big bed, playing his guitars and ordering things on the Internet for the novelty of having them delivered within hours. 

She’s working on a new song, and Ben’s happy to play it with her, making his guitar call and respond to her voice. He smiles when she sings, “I know you’re strong/ you’re a man-made fortress,” and follows up with another human-sounding lick up the neck of the guitar, generally looking and sounding like the sexiest man in the world. 

And she lets herself imagine it. If this was always their life. She’s going to let herself imagine it a little bit, even if she doesn’t know what happens when the tour ends. The band is coming to a consensus around staying in New York, able to play more shows locally while still flying home from time to time to visit their families, for those of the band that have them. And even if Ben has a flat here, she knows that his only solid job offer in hand is with Luke, back in California. He could join another band, but if they were touring at the same time, they’d never see each other at all. 

The rapping on the front door continues in a brisk, non-aggressive fashion. Then Rey’s mobile goes off. 

“Shit,” she says. “I told Poe to stop by with the performance space quotes.” 

She looks down at herself- Ben’s t-shirt covers everything essential on her. 

“Go put some trousers on,” she tells Ben, wiggling past him and slapping his behind as she goes. 

When Rey opens the door, Poe’s expression gets decidedly more cheerful as he looks at her legs. 

“Come in,” Rey says, gesturing to Ben’s flat after checking that his naked arse is no longer in view. 

Poe unzips his windbreaker, revealing that his chest is covered by sticky notes. 

“Pardon,” he says. “Many calls from London this morning.” 

“Oh?” Rey asks, confused. 

“Ben told a German reporter the day before yesterday that this is his last tour with the Knights of Ren. He _didn’t_ tell his label that, apparently.” 

“Oh,” Rey says, looking into Ben’s bedroom, where he’s acquired joggers (black), which do very little to hide what his previous agenda items had been.

Well, if her bare legs hadn’t been a clue, Poe is totally up to speed now. He doesn’t look like he minds. 

“I’ll, uh, be brief,” Poe says, ogling Ben. “So! That Snoke fellow called and recited a number of very boring contract provisions to me. Per your previous instructions, Ben, I told him--” Poe searches for the appropriate sticky note on his chest, plucks it off, and reads it-- “go fuck yourself.”

Ben snorts. Poe continues, “About fifteen minutes later, Mr. Palpatine called, and he said that he’d buy out Rey’s contract if she wanted to move from Skywalker to Empire, as long as you’d stay with the Knights through the end of your contract. Per your instructions, I told him…” he pauses for dramatic effect, “to go fuck himself.” 

Rey can’t help laughing. Poe reviews the rest of his sticky notes. “Then I went to a chicken and waffles place with this artist I met on Grindr, and I missed a few calls, but Palpatine must have rung Luke, and woke him up, and Luke then transferred him back to me, and the gist of all that is that he says he will sue both of you into homelessness if either of you ever try to perform one of the Knights of Ren’s songs off contract with Empire. And that’s where we left it.”

Ben looks saddened by that, but not particularly surprised. Neither is Rey. 

Those songs are a record of a girl yearning for her parents, feeling alone, waiting for someone to come back and save her. She’s not that girl anymore. She’s not waiting anymore. If she sang those songs on _Alone_ , they’d feel like covers. 

Ben’s surprised when Rey reaches out and takes his hand.

“Take a message for Empire,” she says, and Poe fumbles a pen out of his coat to write on his sticky note. “Tell them to go fuck themselves.” 

* * *

Jyn Erso raps on the door of Rey’s dressing room as she’s blasting St. Vincent to hype herself to play Carnegie Hall. It’s a small venue, compared to the festivals they’ve been playing in Europe, but even Rey had heard of it before ever meeting Ben. Soundcheck’s over, and Rey has two hours til call. 

Jyn sizes Rey up: the red lipstick, the shaggy hair that needs to be cut, the tight black dress Jannah tossed at her from an afternoon spent shopping high-end consignment shops, and she apparently approves. 

“You look good, kid,” she says, letting herself in. She doesn’t pull any of her recording equipment out, and she sinks into the battered armchair in the corner of the tiny underground room. 

Rey raises her eyebrows at the woman. She wasn’t on the media list for the evening, but she can’t count on Poe as an effective gatekeeper against a personality like Jyn’s. 

“So!” Jyn says, propping her feet, encased in scuffed Doc Martens, onto the coffee table, and then dropping her handbag, whose tag says it was once expensive but has long since been abused into disrepair, onto her legs. 

She plucks a black rubber USB drive from her handbag and waves it in the air. 

“I was already editing my documentary. Perfectly nice, fifteen, twenty minutes long. Plenty of time to finish before Sundance.” 

“...yes?” Rey says. She hadn’t really expected to see Jyn again. She’d popped up in Stockholm and Cincinnati, and Rey thought she had everything she needed. 

“And then this was anonymously couriered to my apartment earlier today,” Jyn accuses her, waving the thumb drive in the air. 

Rey stares at her in polite befuddlement. “Well, it wasn’t me. I didn’t even know you lived here.” 

Jyn snorts. “I know it wasn’t you. You’re about the only one I know wouldn’t send me this.”

“What is it?” Rey asks nervously. She sent a couple of tit shots to random blokes during the short time period where she’d thought that having sex with a lot of people who weren’t Ben was a good idea, but she doesn’t think any of them have her face in them, and anyway, she’s a rock star now, who cares?

Jyn stares at her challengingly, but Rey refuses to crack. 

“Well,” says Jyn. “I stuck this thing in my laptop, feeling like goddamn Bob Woodward, and it’s just one long audio file. I bet you remember it.” 

Rey carefully blanks her face, just in case Jyn’s bluffing. When Jyn pulls out her mobile and turns up the volume, Rey’s pulse spikes. 

Distant, tinny, she hears her voice crooning the opening of “The System Only Dreams in Total Darkness,” followed by the repetitive foundation of the piano, the snarl of Ben’s guitar. His throaty melody. 

Rey listens to it in silence, the whole song, and the next, where their voices wrap around each other’s, and the next. Ben’s guitar. Rey’s piano. Their voices together. It’s the Empire demo. Rey hasn’t heard it in five years. 

Jyn presses the power button to turn off her mobile.

“I don’t need to have followed you around for a month to recognize your voice,” she says. “You introduce yourself at the end. The time and date are in the metadata. You weren’t just shagging Ben Solo, you were collaborating with him.”

Rey stares at the floor, trying to think of some way to explain it. 

“Everyone already thinks those songs are about me,” she tells Jyn. “They think he wrote my last album too.” 

Jyn’s eyes narrow. “I didn’t think that. Also, it’s not logically possible that he wrote a bunch of songs about how you broke his heart and got you to sing them _with_ him.” 

Rey pushes her shoulders together, trying to think her way out. 

“Anyway, I didn’t think that, and then I took this to Ben Solo, and now I _know_ that’s not true. You should have been credited on every single song on _Alone_ and _Away_. Those songs are about you, but not because he wrote them.”

“What did he say?” Rey demands.

Jyn scoffs. “What kind of journalist would I be, if I told you that before I asked you on camera?”

Rey doesn’t have a good answer to that, but the other woman takes some kind of pity on her. 

“Look, I think he told me the truth, as he sees it, and he turned over the session tapes. On the condition I get your permission to release them first.” 

Rey puts her head in her hands. Even though the whole thing was legal and she’s got an uncashed cheque for half the advance and half the royalties sitting in a box in storage in Birmingham, Ben’ll be toxic when this gets out. She wonders whether even Luke will keep him on.

“Why would he do that?” Rey asks softly. “Is he the one who sent you the demo?” 

Jyn shrugs, like she doesn’t really care.

“Probably not, but I think he was glad to get it off his chest. Also, by the way, if you haven’t noticed, the man lives and breathes for you. Anyway, this isn’t a little girl on the rise documentary anymore,” Jyn says. “I’m thinking longform, and it’ll be all I can do to finish this in time for South-By. The only question is the story I tell.”

“It’s a documentary. Don’t you have to show what actually happened?” Rey asks, her voice hoarse. 

Jyn reaches into her bag and pulls out her video camera. 

“Oh, I think you know better than that,” she says. “Just like a song, the facts get filtered from the subject to the artist to the viewer. It’s a story. I just use video clips instead of music notes. So. You could tell a story. I might win an Oscar. About a washed-up rock star, the cliffs of middle age in sight, who took advantage of a young girl’s talent and naivete. You’d make a good ingenue. There’s a story about your parents, and a story about Solo’s parents. You’re like a modern-day Tess of the D’Ubervilles, and you can cast him as Angel and Alex both.”

Rey flinches. 

Jyn smiles at her sourly. “Of course, I’m not so much of a bitch as to do that, even if that’s how I see it. Not without your permission. Seems like if you wanted to tell the world you wrote every song on Kylo Ren’s two best-selling albums before he ditched you in Birmingham, you would have done it.” 

“That’s not how you should tell it,” Rey says, finally looking up. “That’s not the truth.” 

The other woman flips on the video switch. 

“Okay, so how should I tell it, then?” she asks. 

Rey closes her eyes to collect herself. Thinks about five years ago. About five months ago. Ben falling out his car. Ben holding a microphone. Ben’s voice on the radio, crying _I can’t explain it any other way_. Ben kissing her. Singing with Ben. Loving Ben. Hating Ben. Everything beautiful and terrible and wonderful and strange he’s brought into her life. 

“Five years ago an American wandered into my garage,” she begins, haltingly, as Jyn checks the light in the viewfinder. Rey pauses, squares her shoulders. She looks directly into the camera. “Tell it like a love story.” 

* * *

**_Then_ **

Rey finds a 24-hour Tesco to wait in. Since she is dressed well enough and buys a cup of chamomile tea every hour, she isn’t disturbed before Papa arrives. 

Papa is not a demonstrative man. It’s not in him to pry. For the entire drive back to Birmingham, he makes only three remarks: he’s heard that it is likely to rain for the rest of the week, Grace Ellen is planning a nice roast for dinner the next day, and Finn went ahead and made up the sofa bed for her, conveying perfectly that she is welcome to stay at the Nyambura house for as long as she pleases. Rey sobs, and Papa turns off the radio until they reach the little semi-detached home three streets from the garage. 

Grace Ellen has mercifully sent Finn to bed before they arrive, but she meets Rey with a pile of his old t-shirts and soccer shorts, a flannel, and a new toothbrush in its plastic box. Rey gratefully crawls into the sofa bed and hugs onto one of the cushions to fall asleep.

Rey reads the newspapers front to back the next day, then starts on one of Finn’s pulp mysteries. Finn, once he has established that Rey is not abused, pregnant, or broke--no more broke than she was before meeting Ben, anyway--gives her some space, after a muffled consultation with Rose, conducted in the next room. 

Rey hasn’t a charger for her phone, but doesn’t feel very inclined to reach out to Ben in any event. It’s not mature, she knows. But wrapped in the care of the Nyambura family, she feels very young and a little vicious. 

Still, she’s ready when someone raps sharply on the front door just after dark. Finn jumps up to try to beat her to the door, but she waves him off. There’s a bit of unreality to Ben, always; it feels sometimes like she made him up in her head, a beautiful rock star on holiday, sweeping into her life to take her away from all her troubles. She somehow wouldn’t have been surprised if she never heard from him again, but she is not surprised that he’s turned up on the Nyambura’s doorstep, either. 

Ben’s changed his shirt, but he’s wearing the same trousers as the day previous, and it doesn’t look like he’s had either a rest or a wash. His hair’s a bit stringy where it’s tucked behind his ears. 

Ben rounds on her the moment the door is open. 

“What the _fuck_ , Rey, I’ve been out of my _mind_ ,” Ben says, reaching for her, and looking her up and down as though for visible injury. “I didn’t know how or if you got home, you weren’t there, you weren’t answering your phone, I had to interrogate fucking strangers at your fucking pub to find out where you were likely to be!” 

She lets him grip her shoulders and run his hands down her arms beneath Finn’s football jersey, but then she takes a step back, just beyond the threshold. 

She swallows, and is shocked by how calm her voice sounds when she responds. “My mobile died. I wasn’t sure when you’d be done with your label. So I went home.” It sounds logical when she says it like that, even if it had felt anything but. Her business with Empire Records was concluded, so she went back to the only house that had ever felt like a home. 

Ben rears back like she’s slapped him, more hurt than angry. 

“It wasn’t like that,” he says. “They wanted to go through some resumes and make some calls. I was almost done.”

“Yes,” Rey says. 

Ben clenches his jaw, searching her face. “I didn’t think they’d sign me again without new material. I didn’t think anyone would.” 

“Well,” Rey says. A complete statement. “There you go.” 

He gulps another breath. “It didn’t mean anything had to end. They’re still paying me an advance. They want me to go back to New York tomorrow to start working , but you can come with me. I’ve got an apartment in Brooklyn...or...I inherited a house in Malibu too, you could stay wherever, whichever you wanted to.” 

“Because you’re going on tour, right? Which Snoke preemptively uninvited me to, thanks for that,” Rey snaps. 

“I didn’t tell him to do that. And he--he doesn’t get to decide that. It’s a grind on tour, but I can fly you out wherever I’ll be if I’m in one place for more than a couple of nights. That’s months off, though. I’ll just be in New York, and there’s no reason you can’t be there too.” 

“Ben, I _live_ here,” Rey objects. 

Ben objects to that characterization. “There’s nothing for you here--you really want to be a mechanic on the shitty side of town the rest of your life?” he says, his voice a rasp now. 

“It turns out being a mechanic is the best option I’ve got,” Rey snarls right back. 

“You _shouldn’t_ though, Rey, you’re talented, you’re only 18, you could go to school or something, study music, do something else, I’ll-”

Rey doesn’t want to hear anything more about that. She doesn’t want him to lie to her. She doesn’t want him to promise her anything else that will never happen. 

“But do you think Snoke was wrong? Was he lying, about my music?” she demands. “He said it was completely unusable.” 

Ben sucks his lips into his mouth, unwilling to say, and that’s an answer in and of itself. His eyes are shiny and bright, and she doesn’t think it’s drugs, this time. 

“I thought it was really good,” he finally says, softly, reluctantly. First person. Simple past.

Rey slowly shakes her head back and forth. 

“Then that’s it, Ben. You tried. It’s not going to work out.” 

Ben takes a deep breath, like a gasp, and braces his hand on the door frame. 

“I know what I said, but it’s not too late to figure things out,” he begs. “He’s still paying me a huge advance. I’ll go work with his people in New York again, do whatever the label wants. But it’s not like they can control my whole life. You can be there too.” 

“And what would I be in New York? Your girlfriend?” Rey’s throat keeps spasming around the words. She tries to imagine it. Watching Ben work those awful men. Watching him fail to compose anything he likes for months, years. Feeling alone, even in the same room as him. 

Ben’s eyes are wide and black, glittering like stars. 

“You want to get married, is that it? Fine, fuck it, let’s get married. I don’t care, you can have anything I have, just don’t...don’t leave me. Don’t do this.” 

He’s nearly frantic now, tears openly welling out of his eyes and catching in the lines of his face. 

Rey closes her own eyes so that she doesn’t have to see it. “I can’t. I can’t sit there and wonder whether you’re coming home. It would kill me. I’d hate you. I can’t do it.”

“What are you afraid of? I’m not your parents,” he argues, words coming faster. “I’m not going to die. I’m not going to leave you. I’m not...I’m not going to put a fucking needle in my arm. Jesus, Rey. I’m a crap composer, I’m fucking thirty years old with none of my shit figured out, but I’m not _that_. I’m not a junkie, I’m not a cheater...I’m...I love you. Please. Come with me.” 

She closes her eyes tighter, covers them with her hands. 

“Are you even listening to me?” he demands. “Why won’t you just trust me on this?” 

He’s standing in waters over her head, beckoning her deeper. If she goes with him, she’ll drown. 

“It’s not going to work out,” Rey repeats. 

Ben grunts, an animal noise of pain. 

Finn comes up behind her. She surprised he’s given it this long. “Look mate, you’ve said your piece, and now it’s time for you to go. You’re just upsetting her.” 

Ben doesn’t take his eyes off Rey’s face while Finn is speaking. He’s still waiting, even though Rey gave him her answer at the start of this.

“It’s not going to work out, Ben,” she tells him softly, gently, one more time. “I’m sorry. I know you tried.” 

Finn doesn’t touch her, but he’s standing closer to her than Ben is, and for a moment, Rey is afraid that Ben is going to hit him. His fists curl up, and the expression on his face is frightening. But at the last minute he whirls, slamming the flat of his palm into the brick of the Nyambura entryway. 

_Not your hands, Ben, you’re a musician_ , Rey’s mind wails. 

“Fuck!” Ben screams. He hunches his shoulders. Walks back to his car.

Finn and Rey stand there together and watch as he drives away. There’s really no reason for her to stay there, after, and Finn walks her home. 

* * *

It’s three days before Rey hears from him again. Her heart feels like a solid lump of lead in her chest the entire time, even though she manages to show up at work, make her apologies to Mr. Baccarin, eat, and shower.

She looks at the ceiling instead of sleeping, trying to remember if she’s washed her sheets since Ben last slept in them. 

He’s never texted her before, but it comes up in her mobile under his name in the middle of the night. 

Ben: <Sunset over McCarren Park>

There’s a photo, too. Ben’s seated on a narrow balcony. He’s captured his left hand on the neck of his electric guitar, along with a view of some trees, the tops of buildings, and a brilliant orange sky.

Ben: <wish you were here>

And a big part of Rey wishes she were too. There’s enough room on that balcony for her. He’d come home from recording, crack open a bottle, and meet her outside to talk about their days. She could learn to drive American, get a job in a garage, and sleep against his chest every night.

Wondering, the whole time, if she knew him at all. 

So Rey doesn’t reply. She looks at the picture, and does not reply, and falls asleep slightly soothed by the idea of Ben safe and well, even if it’s without her. 

Grace Ellen sticks her head out of the office at half past three the next afternoon, the receiver to the office line tucked under her chin. Her lips purse as she examines Rey’s form, hunched beneath the bonnet of a recalcitrant BMW. 

“It’s Mr. Solo,” she says. Ben has been downgraded to the status of “customer” and removed to the distance of his last name in Grace Ellen’s world. “He says someone is closing up the cottage today and you’ve left some things there. He asks if he can have them delivered to your flat tonight.” 

Rey freezes upon the discovery that Ben’s voice is less than six feet away. Feels a momentary burst of anger at the idea that he’s rung her workplace. Of course, if he’d rung her mobile, she wouldn’t have answered. 

She wills herself calm. She can’t remember what she might have left--perhaps some knickers, a toothbrush, a pair of shorts? Oh, her rain coat. That would be more expensive to replace. 

Is it a trick? Surely he’s not waiting to ambush her again at her flat--he hasn’t even rung over the past few days. 

“That’s fine,” Rey says, muting her feelings. “Tell him thanks.” 

* * *

Rey’s dragging feet slow to a halt when she sees the long, green form of the Citroen parked along the street in front of her flat. 

Her faculties of reason tell her that Ben is across an ocean, and it’s only the emotional resonance of the view that tells her that Ben’s come back for her. 

It’s not him, of course. An older man, shorter and wider than Ben, opens the door as she approaches, and steps out on the pavement. He’s wearing an outfit that the Prince of Wales might wear to shoot grouse at Balmoral: tweed coat, knee britches, matching tie. 

His black hair is carefully slicked back, and his greying mustache is groomed to precision. 

“Lando Calrissian,” he tells her, extending his hand like a king preparing for tribute. “My dear,” he says in American accents, “you must be Miss Johnson.” 

Rey blinks, trying to form a connection between this man and the car. 

“You’re--Ben’s godfather?” she asks hesitantly.

Lando snorts. “Is that what Ben said? As though Han or Leia ever stepped foot in a church their entire lives. Ben used to call me his uncle, before he started to call me a sonovabitch.” 

“Ah,” Rey answers, unsure of how to respond, other than that it sounded like Ben.

She looks at the Citroen, gleaming and clean. She guesses Ben wasn’t successful in convincing Lando to part with the car, either.

“Anyway, just point me which way to your flat, and I’ll help you carry your things up,” Lando says. “I’m going to the country this evening.” 

“It can’t be very much,” Rey protests, looking into the backseat, which is empty. 

“No, no, most of it is in my grad student’s van,” Lando tells her, gesturing at a robin’s egg blue delivery van parked in front of the Citroen. A young woman with braces on her teeth and a mercilessly flat combed bob leans out the driver’s side window and waves briefly before opening the door. “Jannah, you don’t have to get anything. I’ve got it.”

“Your knees will get it,” Jannah replies in level tones, stepping out onto the pavement. “You can carry the trumpet.” 

Jannah flings open the back door of her Corsavan, and Rey sees the keyboard, trumpet, and amplifiers from Ben’s cottage, along with a small paper grocery sack of clothing. 

And his grandfather’s guitar.

“Oh no,” Rey says. “It’s just my clothes. I can get them. The rest is Ben’s.” 

It’s embarrassing enough, that these nice strangers have been enlisted to return her knickers and rain coat to her. Now she has to explain these logistics of returning Ben’s musical instruments to him in Brooklyn. Her composure is on the verge of breaking.

Lando’s eyebrows are raised. “He asked me to send him his soundboards and the recording equipment, but that’s it. He wanted all the instruments dropped with you.”

Rey’s mouth hangs open. “I don’t even have room for all this!” she says. 

Jannah looks at Lando suspiciously. 

“Well, you can always sell it,” Lando says slowly. “This is professional quality stuff. But I don’t have any way of getting it to him, and he said it belonged to you.” 

Rey’s cheeks feel high and tight with unshed tears. 

“You know, why don’t you stay and keep an eye on the cars,” Lando says to the woman, accurately assessing the risk of theft in Rey’s neighborhood. “I’ll help her bring everything up.”

Jannah frowns, but Rey promises to do the heavy lifting, and there’s only half a flight of stairs to the small lift in the rear of her building. 

“He didn’t tell me anything else,” Lando says to Rey as she carefully holds the guitar in one hand and her clothes in the other. Her flat is a wreck, she knows--she hasn’t felt up to cleaning. 

She stares fixedly at the opposite wall when she opens her door, willing herself not to care what Lando thinks of the smallness and shabbiness of it.

“If it helps, he sounded pretty broken up too,” Lando remarks. 

“No,” Rey says. It doesn’t help.

That shuts the older man up, and they make two more trips to retrieve the keyboard and the two amplifiers with cables. Rey doesn’t even own an electric guitar, what’s she supposed to do with them? 

“Ben said you were a musician,” Lando offers again on the last trip. “I used to play trumpet for his grandfather, even did a few shows with Leia.” 

“Uh huh,” Rey says, unable to process any more information about Ben. “I’m not a musician. I’m a mechanic.” 

Lando looks surprised. “Oh, the same girl who fixed my car? I didn’t realize.” He pauses, considering. “Ben said you were very talented.” 

She snorts. “Yeah, guess that’s the sort of thing men say.” 

Lando tugs the corner of his mouth out. “I doubt he was trying to sugar you. I know that boy’s got his problems, but he takes his music seriously.” 

“That and nothing else,” Rey can’t help but say. 

Lando shrugs. “That’s just how he was raised. I don’t want to make excuses for him, because I don’t know any of your business, but his mother had all the maternal qualities of one of those birds that lays its eggs in other birds’ nests. When she wasn’t dumping him on her brother, she’d just bring him along with her whatever she was doing. Didn’t pay any amount of attention to him unless he had an instrument in his hands.”

Rey doesn’t want to be curious about the details of Ben’s life that he never told her, but she can’t resist asking, “But didn’t he have a father too?”

Lando grimaces. “Han was my best friend, but I lost him in a bottle a long time before cancer got him. I should have done more for Ben. I thought he’d do fine with Luke. I really would have thought he’d be a little smarter about signing up with Empire.”

Rey sighs. “Yeah, me too.” 

The instruments cover the little bit of free living space Rey has. She thinks that if she rearranges some things in her closet, she can make space under her bed, but why wouldn’t she just sell everything? It will remind her of him every time she sees it, which she’s sure was at least half his intention. 

Lando pats around his trousers and comes up with his wallet, from which he retrieves a battered business card printed with his name and an address in Birmingham. 

“Look, I teach strings at Royal Birmingham. If you ever do decide to pursue it, give me a call. I haven’t toured in twenty years, but I know some people still.”

“Thanks,” Rey says, taking the card without any intention of keeping it. 

“He asked me-” Lando pauses, looking uncertain. He looks around her shabby little flat. 

“What?” Rey says. 

Lando thinks about it. “I’m not going to tell him anything. It’s not my place. But he did ask me to tell you to keep practicing. An hour a day.” 

Rey looks at her ragged fingertips. The calluses have almost all peeled off. She hasn’t touched her own keyboard, the one Ben derided as more of a toy than a musical instrument. She hasn’t sung. She’s kept the radio off in the garage. She doesn’t want to hear music. Every song reminds her of Ben. 

And she thinks about how she felt at the beginning. The summer romance she wanted. The first time she heard him play. The exhilaration of singing with Ben. How he looked at her when she held his grandfather’s guitar. 

“Yeah, sure,” Rey says, even though it hadn’t really been a question. “Tell him I’ll practice.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> LBR Rey probably blasts Masseducation to hype herself up, but 'New York' fits the fic better. 
> 
> I've tried not to make this into a Lucy Dacus RPF, but if you can't tell, I have like...a big crush on her.


	16. Walking on a String

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I can't believe this is the last chapter!! I'm going to miss these disaster artists and their playlists so much.

**_Now_ **

“Well, I quite liked him,” Rose says as Ian Voorhes, aspiring guitarist, shows them his flannel-clad back and departs their studio. 

Rey's first order of business, with the tour concluded, was to find new studio space. Lando, of all people, knew a guy with a converted warehouse in Bushwick, and when Rey couldn’t make the budget work with the rest of her first advance, she sent Paige to the garage in Birmingham to finally retrieve her cheques from _Alone_ and _Away._ Rey bought half the floor, a new van, and some upgraded equipment. They can record for years and only need to worry about the food money. It doesn’t feel wrong to spend the money now. She earned it. She more than earned it. 

Finn stares at Rose as though she’s grown a second head. “He missed half a dozen notes on ‘Masterpiece,’ and it’s not even that fast. Or that complicated.”

Ian Voorhes was only the last of the less than impressive applicants for Paige’s position. True, this was their first day of auditions, but even the couple who could perform up to Paige’s level were not characters Rey wanted to be trapped in a seven-hour van ride in. They need to get to work on their second album before tour season starts back up in April, and they need to replace Paige, now back in Birmingham and newly employed as music director at her church. 

“Oh, but how would I have known how a Vietnamese restaurant is really _authentic_ , unless he’d explained it to us?” Rose says, a sweet edge in her voice. 

Jannah sighs and covers her face with her hands. 

“We could just ask Luke for a recommendation,” she mutters. 

“Luke would send us someone fantastic, ten years older than us, and unwilling to play for a $100 per diem and even royalty split,” Rey says glumly. “We’ll keep putting ads up with the local music press.”

Finn coughs into his fist, and Rose makes a shushing noise. She gives Rey a secretive smile.

They’re all tiptoeing around Rey this week--not because bringing in a new lead guitarist is stressful, although it is, but because Ben is back in LA. She’d known it would have to happen eventually--he needs to start tapping into Luke’s network for session artist gigs, see his mother, see his lawyer--but she misses him terribly, even if they’re scheduled to meet in Niagara Falls for Rey’s first proper holiday in another week. (Going to a place neither of them had ever visited posed some difficulties in light of Ben’s extensive travel history). 

There’s some hope he’ll be back in Brooklyn on a less temporary basis, and Rey’s staying in his flat with that in mind. He could find a recording studio in the city to bring him on, after all. 

This time, Ben’s left most of his clothes in the dresser and his unpronounceable smoothie ingredients in the freezer and his almond milk creamer in the fridge, and it feels as though he’s just stepped to the other room, not out of Rey’s life. 

Still, she woke up this morning patting his empty side of the bed, and nothing in this day has improved since then. This isn’t making music. This is administration. 

Rey, Finn, Jannah, and Rose are sitting on folding chairs in their new rehearsal space, conducting auditions as though they’d ever hired anyone in their entire lives. What the fuck is Rey to do with a CV? And does it even matter if Gabriel Boseman, formerly of Albany band Hail Lizard Queen, has a bachelor’s degree in Near Eastern Studies as well as a passing knowledge of the works of Bon Iver?

Rey can’t stomach any of them. Fake woke hipsters who dramatically overestimate their own musical abilities or cringingly awkward guitar savants who can’t look Rey in the eye. Rey’s tempted to become a piano-only band, even if it would mean she couldn’t perform _any_ of the albums she ever wrote. 

“Well, should we pack up for the day and see to inauthentic kebabs back at the flat?” Rey suggests. (It is no longer ‘Ben’s flat’ in her mind. She has painted the ugly white walls a nice kelly green and mentally established joint tenancy). 

Rose smirks at her. “Eat some trail mix or something. We have one more audition,” she says. 

Rey blinks in confusion and shuffles the stack of CVs, then squints at the calendar on her mobile. “I don’t have anyone else listed…?” she protests.

Jannah gives an airy wave of her hand. “No CV. The demo was pretty good though, so Poe penciled him in.” 

Rey is only beginning to connect the dots in her head when she sees a familiar, broad-shouldered form fill the doorway. Ben, showing up unannounced at her workplace again. 

Ben smiles, looking tentative and tired. She talked to him last night--afternoon in LA time. He must have taken a painfully early flight to be here before dinner. He’s squeezing the handle of an electric guitar case and nodding at the other members of the band. 

“You were waiting in the hall?” Rey squeaks, her throat feeling close and tight. 

Ben puts the case down. “Yeah. Just hoping you didn’t hire one of those other cockgoblins already?” 

Rey snorts. “No. We still don’t have anyone.”

Ben smiles. “Good. I’d like to apply.” 

Rey looks around the room in amazement. “You guys knew about this?” 

Jannah points a manicured fingertip at Finn. “It was his idea, anyway. It seemed like a pretty obvious solution to your dramatic moping.”

Rey gulps down some extra oxygen. “You guys don’t have to put my boyfriend in the band just to keep me from moping.” 

Rose waves an airy hand. “Of course we don’t. But look, this is a two birds, one stone situation. We already know we can put up with his dramatic arse on tour, and you’re much more pleasant when you’re getting it on the regular too.” 

Jannah rolls her eyes. “Also, he’s okay with the guitar.”

Ben swallows a response to that faint praise, looking at Rey with big and pleading eyes.

“I thought you were looking for work with Luke,” Rey says softly. 

Ben shakes his head. “If you’re here, I’m here,” he says. “I sold my grandfather’s house. I’m all in.”

It hits Rey as hard as an ocean wave, the seriousness of it. She looks at Finn for reassurance, and he gives her an arched eyebrow and a tilt of the corners of his mouth. 

“Can you? Even play with another band?” Rey asks. 

Rey doesn’t know what his deal with Empire is, what he’s given up in his last contract. 

“Not as the Knights of Ren,” he says. Gives her half a grin. “Or as Ben Solo. But as an unnamed guitar player in Rey Johnson’s band? I can do that. If you’ll have me.” 

“And if we hire someone else on lead guitar?” Rey asks, heart pounding. 

“Well, I’ve always thought I would make an excellent house husband. Yes, I do the cooking. Yes, I do the cleaning, yes, I--” Ben fists his hands on his hips, ticking off his qualifications. 

She laughs, feeling her heart swelling too big in her chest like the ache of an underused muscle after a long convalescence. Does she know how to be happy with someone? She will have to learn, she supposes. 

“You’re a performer!” she teases him. “If I didn’t let you out to play, I’d find you on the street, busking for pocket change along with the naked cowboy and the men dressed as muppets.” 

He gives her a crooked smile. “I played 132 concerts, across twelve countries, in five years without you. And all I wanted was one more morning waking up next to the only woman I’ve ever loved. Will ever love.” 

Rey’s breath catches. She feels embarrassing tears begin to prick her eyes and her nose going soggy. 

“Oh come on!” Rose yells, pounding the card table. “Make him grovel more. Make him play Free Bird and Hotel California for his audition.” 

Ben’s face screws up as he considers his answer, but Rey rises, knocking the pile of CVs to the floor. She flings herself at him as Ben prepares to respond to Rose, likely with a defense of Lynard Skynyrd and a burning rebuke of the Eagles. 

Rey cuts him off by method of jumping into his arms and kissing him on his ridiculous, open mouth. Ben swings her up so that he’s got his arms hooked under her knees and kisses her hard enough to clack their teeth together. 

“Yes,” she says, when she can break it off.

Ben kisses her again, probably rather more enthusiastically than is appropriate, given they’re in company, but enough to take her breath away.

“Yes what?” he breathes.

“Hmmm?” Rey says, going for his lower lip.

“Yes I get the job, or yes I need to play Free Bird and several other mortifying songs while I grovel for your friends?”

Rey wraps her arms more tightly around his neck and buries her face against it.

“Yes to both. If you really love me.”

“I do. I do.” 

* * *

**_Then_ **

Rey thought that watching the Grammys live from Birmingham would be a solitary experience. But even though the red carpet doesn’t start until nearly 11 at night, and they all have work the next day, she’s tucked into Rose’s futon between the Tico sisters, eating pickled carrots and prawn crisps. 

Paige, who thinks she’s supportive, has made them matching jumpers with her Cricut that proclaim, ‘Fuck Kylo Ren,’ even if she’s not entirely up to speed on why they hate him now. Rose, who thinks she’s funny, has amended that message with an ‘I’ and an ‘ed’, using masking tape and Sharpie. Well, it’s not as though Rey could have worn it out of doors even before the amendment. 

Finn had been invited, but as it’s only two days past his last row with Rose, he’s scarpered off. Rose wants him to move in with her; he wants to spend more time with his footie league. 

Paige’s boyfriend is working a night shift at the lorry yard, so they’re 100% angry feminine energy as they watch the sun-soaked parade of musicians and producers walk down the red carpet on the livestream. 

Rey hasn’t seen Ben in almost two years, but it doesn’t take her any time to recognize him when he arrives. 

Ben’s not late; someone has poured him into a new blue-on-black tuxedo, and he looks supremely uncomfortable as he walks in alone, flinching from the bursts of the flashbulbs. 

Someone put him in a new tuxedo, but they couldn’t make him wash his hair or shave a week of stubble. Awards shows don’t seem to be his thing. Or perhaps it’s this particular awards show, for this particular album. 

A hand enters the camera frame, closing partially around Ben’s upper arm. He’s in profile for only a moment, but Rey recognizes Alistair Snoke, nearly frog-marching Ben into Staples Center. That probably explains why Ben’s there at all, Rey thinks. Even if _Alone_ has been at the top of the rock charts for months, Ben’s done no press. 

Rey throws a crisp at the telly nonetheless. 

“ _Booooo_ ,” she says. 

Rey is fairly sozzled by this point in the evening. She’s mostly avoided drinking whilst being angry at Ben, as that would be rather ironic, instead pouring her energy into writing songs that rhyme “wanker” and “faker,” and incidentally becoming rather decent on his grandfather’s guitar. 

Ben disappears into the building, and they have an hour or so before they reach the rock categories. Ben’s nominated in Best Alternative Music Album, Best Rock Performance, and Record of the Year, so they’ll have to stay up all night if they’re to see if he wins anything. 

Rey’s ready. She has crisps for days. 

Paige and Rose debate whether Katy Perry’s dress is meant to look like an anal plug, or whether that’s only a fortunate coincidence, and Rey drinks on in silence. 

Her eyes have no trouble picking out Ben’s face in the sea of brightly colored nominees. He’s black and white, taller and starker than most of the others. 

The camera zooms in on his stoic face when they announce the award for Best Alternative Music Album, but he loses to poor dead David Bowie. Rey relaxes muscles she didn’t know she had clenched. 

Rose runs out of cider and breaks out some wine from her parents’ anniversary party. Rey accepts a glass and raises it at the telly.

Ben sent seven text messages this week, asking if she wanted to come to the ceremony with him. She is not sure whether he contemplated her attending as his date or as the uncredited songwriter of the album. He didn’t say. So she didn’t respond.

Then Rose signed him up for a German BDSM porn service using his mobile number, and he’s probably changed it now. 

It’s harder for her when Ben goes on stage to perform his entry for Song of the Year. It’s a minimalist set, with Ben backlit against a black backdrop. The rest of the Knights of Ren are obscured by smoke machines and the darkness. 

All he’s done for costuming is to strip to a ragged white ribbed tank over his tuxedo pants, black braces tight on his shoulders and dramatic against the pale musculature of his naked arms. His movements are bare and unexpressive; he’s moving as necessary to make the music, and nothing more. His brand new acoustic guitar. The complex time signature, the simple chords. 

He vibrates with tension, red lips twisting as he sings into the solo microphone, “ _I should live in salt for leaving you behind_.” 

Rey thinks he means it, maybe even more than she meant it when she wrote those lyrics four years ago. 

“He’s so emo,” Paige sighs, sounding equal parts impressed and disdainful. Ben’s voice sounds like tears. Rose’s telly isn’t fancy enough for her to tell if he’s actually crying, but his face is taut and miserable. 

She wanted to make fun of him, throw more crisps. Hard to do that if he looks like he’s falling apart on live television. 

Rose scrutinizes Rey’s face. “Do you want to watch something else? Some Big Brother? I heard there was a threesome this week.” 

“Nah,” Rey sighs, settling in. “I want to see if I win anything.”

Rose grimaces. “Think he’d say anything about you if you did?” 

“Only if he wants Empire to sue him. The license says all his songs are supposed to be credited to the Knights of Ren.”

“And yours too.”

“And mine too.”

Dead David Bowie wins Best Rock Performance as well, and Ben looks relieved, if anything. Paige falls asleep in the love seat, her bare feet tucked into her dressing gown. Rose is rubbing her eyes, but she puts a kettle on and curls up next to Rey on the futon, her head on Rey’s shoulder. She locks an arm under Rey’s as they reach the category for Song of the Year.

Rey’s money is on Adele, but she looks as surprised as anyone else when Faith Hill announces the Knights of Ren for “I should live in salt.” The camera swings through the crowd, looking for Ben, ultimately coming to rest on his empty seat. There’s some confusion and laughter on the stage as they call his name. Rey reaches for the channel changer and flicks the telly off when she sees Alistair climbing the stairs to collect the award on Ben's behalf. 

She expects she’ll hear about him tomorrow, the way she has over the past two years: a fight backstage, passed out in the loo, perhaps smashing his guitars behind the set. It’s over for the night.

Maybe he doesn’t even know yet that she won. 

She is so angry.

He got everything he wanted, and it didn't even make him happy.

Rey turns to Rose, who is nearly falling asleep where she sits. 

“Hey, do you want to start a band?”

* * *

_**December 1, 2020** \- Transcript of All Songs Considered Interview with Rey Johnson. _

_I’m Bob Boilen from NPR Music in Washington._

_With her first international tour and three Grammy nominations under her belt, including Best New Artist, Birmingham singer and songwriter Rey Johnson joins us to talk about her forthcoming sophomore album, ‘Rebellion.’ Johnson previously collaborated with lead singer Ben Solo of the Knights of Ren on their award-winning albums ‘Alone,’ and ‘Away.’ That same emotional energy and imagery is apparent in her first single on ‘Rebellion,’ where she is now joined by Solo on lead guitar and vocals. She’s here to talk about the single, ‘Walking on a String.’_

_Q. Welcome. Did you enjoy your tiny desk concert?_

_A. The name did not fully prepare me. I think I stepped in your coffee._

_Q. Sorry about that._

_A. Oh, no, I think it helped wake me up. We took the train from New York this morning._

_Q. You wrote all the songs on ‘Rebellion’--as well as the ones on ‘Alone’ and ‘Away’--in Birmingham, England. How is it different this time?_

_A. Well, I don’t have a day job anymore. Also, we can afford pizza **and** beer this time around. And this is Ben’s ninth album, and my second. We know what we’re doing. It’s made for a more relaxed process. _

_Q. Is that it?_

_A. Well, no. [Muffled laughter.] But that’s all you’re getting out of me._

_Q. You’re ruining my attempt to smoothly segue to how it’s been working with Ben Solo, right after the controversy regarding songwriting credit for two Knights of Ren albums._

_A. Well, we stayed focused on this album. On looking forward._

_Q. So how was it?_

_A. You’ll have to listen to ‘Rebellion’ and let me know._

_Q. So you’ll be singing about your relationship with him in this album?_

_[Lengthy pause, rustling noises. Exhale.]_

_Q. You’re grinning._

_A. Well, Bob, I get asked that question a lot. What my songs are about._

_Q. Has the answer to that question changed?_

_A. Maybe. Or maybe I have._

_Q. So? Are you writing about Ben Solo?_

_[Lengthy pause.]_

_A. All my songs are about us._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The Grammy for Song of the Year is awarded to the songwriter who wrote the lyrics and melody line, not the performer or producer (who win Album or Record of the Year instead). 
> 
> On royalties and album credit, the question is more complex- some bands give them to the person who writes the melody line only, with percussion and lyrics getting only a salary. Of course, think of all the songs where the lyrics or the percussion line are the most memorable thing!! If you consider the National as an example, frontman Matt Berninger doesn't get album songwriting credit because he only writes the lyrics after the guitarist and keyboardist (the Dessner brothers) have written the melody lines. 
> 
> Studies have shown that the most successful bands (in terms of staying together) split royalties evenly among all the members. 
> 
> ***
> 
> Have you ever watched a [Tiny Desk Concert? ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xLFeeOVrNlI) They also podcast!
> 
> ***
> 
> I wrote this to challenge myself to write something like a romance novel in emotional beats and length, and it's been such a learning process! Thanks for nerving out about folk rock with me!

**Author's Note:**

> Kink-shame me on Twitter @YTCShepard.
> 
> Many thanks to Minstrels and PoetHrotsvitha for Brit-picking this! All errors are made by your dumb American author. 
> 
> I also made a Spotify playlist of the songs mentioned in this fic, which is available [here ](https://open.spotify.com/playlist/029X3bJKOBNBggnEeE6V3r?si=Mrs2IPhyT12qkC3JXmU1IA).


End file.
